Date: 2024-10-31 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00022826
SAUDI ARABIA
SHEIK YAMANI DIES AGED 90
Saudi Arabia ... In the 1970s and 80s Ahmed Zaki Yamani was a symbol of the new age of oil, wealth and power that “black gold” accorded to his homeland
SHEIK YAMANI DIES AGED 90
Saudi Arabia ... In the 1970s and 80s Ahmed Zaki Yamani was a symbol of the new age of oil, wealth and power that “black gold” accorded to his homeland
Ahmed Zaki Yamani at a news conference in Doha, Qatar, in 1976. Photograph: AP
Original article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/01/sheikh-ahmed-zaki-yamani-obituary
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
I did consulting work with the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research (KISR) in the early 1980s. This was my introduction to the Middle East and at the time Kuwait was probably the most advanced and most Western country in the region. I travelled to Kuwait three times for three months over a period of three years.
The Middle East oil wealth bonanza had been in progress for around 10 years and the building boom in Kuwait City was huge with very impressive architecture. Most of the technical skills were imported from the 'West' and most of the labor came from South Asia. In Kuwait, office skills came mainly from Egypt.
Even though the oil bonanza was only a decade old, the Kuwait Sovereign Wealth Fund was huge ... at the time, probably already the biggest in the world.
It was during this time that I became aware of the wealth and power of Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia who was at the same time a son of the Middle East and fully understanding of Western World. In the mid-1970s I wrote an essay with the theme that the Arab oil boycott and the establishment of the OPEC cartel was the biggest international economic event in all of history ... and I still think this assessment had merit. In my experience, Sheik Yamani is the one person that set the stage for successful national development in Saudi Arabia. He fell out of favor in the late 1980s, but by then he had already set the stage for Saudi Arabia's ongoing accumulation of wealth.
In my view, 1973 marked the end of the USA's international dominance because the USA had assumed that low cost energy to power its economy would be available for ever ... and it was Sheik Yamani, more than anyone else that made that dream come to an end.
Peter Burgess
Powerful Saudi Arabian oil minister who played a key role in the global crisis of the 1970s and was kidnapped by Carlos the Jackal
Written by Ian Black @ian_black
Monday March 1st, 2021. 10.42 EST (Accessed July 2022)
In the 1970s and 80s Ahmed Zaki Yamani, who has died in London aged 90, was a symbol of the new age of oil, wealth and power that “black gold” accorded to his homeland Saudi Arabia – still the possessor of the world’s largest oil reserves.
Known internationally for his suave style, goatee beard and soft-spoken tone, Yamani served as petroleum and mineral resource minister under four Saudi monarchs, starting in 1962 with Saud, son of the founder of the conservative kingdom. He was also a highly influential figure in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), founded in 1960. For most of that decade oil was less than $2 per barrel.
Yamani first captured world attention during the crisis that erupted in October 1973 when Egypt and Syria launched their war on Israel, following its victory in 1967. King Faisal, initially reluctant, in solidarity with other Arab oil exporters and Iran, initiated production cuts and halted supplies to the US and other western countries. The Arab embargo was the response to Washington’s unwavering support for the Jewish state.
Oil prices then quadrupled globally, triggering an international crisis and generating vast wealth for producers. “We are masters of our own commodity,” Yamani declared. Until 1973 the Saudis had earned $8-9bn a year. By spring 1974 their annual revenues were $34bn, though Faisal’s role in the embargo had ended by then. Rising consumption contributed to increased profits. The jokey pun “Yamani or your life” reflected his global fame.
Yamani later extricated the Saudi oil industry from the grip of American companies in a series of moves that produced a deal on national ownership of Saudi Aramco in 1976, marking the emergence of the kingdom as the leading power in the region and an improved relationship with successive US administrations.
Ahmed Zaki Yamani, second left, attending the negotiations between the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and the representatives of the western oil companies in 1973. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Yamani’s close links with Faisal ensured him a key role in these historic developments, and he was rewarded by large tracts of land, which made him very rich. “His style of diplomacy, his mastery of analysis and negotiation, and his skill with the press all gave him a decisive influence,” wrote Daniel Yergin in his history of the oil industry, The Prize. “His power [was] augmented by simple longevity, the fact that he ended up being ‘there’ longer than anyone else.” But he got on badly with Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, who preferred cooperating with the Shah of Iran.
Proximity to the throne meant Yamani personally witnessed dramatic events. In March 1975, he saw Faisal being assassinated by his nephew. In December that year he was among the 11 Opec ministers taken hostage in Vienna, by Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. “Carlos and me, we were talking, joking and so on,” Yamani later told Al Jazeera TV. “I mean, he was very kind to me, but he told me he was going to kill me.” Yamani and Jamshid Amouzegar, his Iranian counterpart, were the last to be released in Algeria, to where they had been flown.
Yamani was born in Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, when camels still thronged the streets. His father Hassan and grandfather were Islamic jurists of Yemeni origin, and his mother, Fatima, was a poet. He was quickly recognised as intelligent and studied at universities in Cairo and New York, and took an MA in international law at Harvard, where he gained useful insights into American life.
In the late 50s he set up the first law office in Saudi Arabia and worked as an adviser to government ministers, attracting the attention of Faisal, who succeeded Saud in 1964. The following year he drafted the kingdom’s anti-slavery law. Yamani was one of few commoners working for the royal family. His title “sheikh” was entirely honorific – a reflection, Yergin argued, of exaggerated perceptions of his influence.
In 1986 he was sacked after disputes with King Fahd, who came to the throne after the death of his brother Khaled in 1982. By then crude prices had dropped to record lows. He had held his position for 24 years, making him the longest-serving oil minister in Opec. In 1990, Yamani launched the Centre for Global Energy Studies in London but lived in Switzerland. He also set up a foundation for the preservation and publication of old Arabic and Islamic manuscripts.
In an interview in 2000, when shale oil was little known and renewables were still in their infancy, Yamani predicted that technology such as electric cars, combined with environmental legislation, would reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and increase production from outside Opec. “The stone age did not end because the world ran out of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil,” he famously said.
Two decades earlier his birthplace was clearly on his mind when he told the journalist Robert Lacey: “If I have to say one thing that this kingdom stands for, above all others, it is Islam. One day even we will run out of oil. But we will never run out of Mecca and Medina.”
He and his first wife, Laila Sulaiman Faidhi, an Iraqi, married in 1955 and had two daughters, Mai (a UK-based author and scholar) and Maha, and a son, Hani. Tamam al-Anbar became his second wife in 1975 and they had two daughters, Sarah and Arwa, and three sons, Faisal, Sharaf and Ahmed. Yamani is survived by Tamam, his children, 24 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.