By Nneka Nwogwugwu
A long-serving oil minister in Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Zaki Yamani who led the kingdom through the 1973 oil crisis and the nationalisation of its state energy company has died at 90.
Saudi state television reported his death on Tuesday without mentioning a cause.
It said he would be buried in the holy city of Mecca.
Known for his Western-style business suits and soft-spoken, measured tones, Yamani helped Saudi Arabia command a dominating presence in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) from its birth.
The kingdom remains a heavyweight in the group even today and its decisions ripple through the oil industry, affecting prices from the barrel down to the gasoline pump.
In a tribute by author Daniel Yergin he said “To the global oil industry, to politicians and senior civil servants, to journalists and to the world at large, Yamani became the representative, and indeed the symbol, of the new age of oil.
“His visage, with his large, limpid, seemingly unblinking brown eyes and his clipped, slightly curved Van Dyke beard, became familiar the planet over.”
Naturenews gathered from Wikipedia that the 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo.
The embargo was targeted at nations perceived as supporting Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
The initial nations targeted were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States with the embargo also later extended to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa.
By the end of the embargo in March 1974,the price of oil had risen nearly 300%, from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally; US prices were significantly higher.
The embargo caused an oil crisis, or “shock”, with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy.
It was later called the “first oil shock”, followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the “second oil shock”.