Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister, 1930-2021

Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister, 1930-2021

Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the former Saudi oil minister who became a global celebrity after he orchestrated the 1973 oil embargo that shifted energy market power decisively in favour of the Middle East, died in London this week, aged 90.

His name is forever linked to the Arab use of oil as a weapon against the US and other western supporters of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. This action quadrupled crude prices and pitched many economies into recession.

Yet throughout his long tenure as Saudi Arabia's oil minister from 1962 to 1986, Yamani was far from radical. As linchpin of the Opec cartel at the height of its ability to manipulate oil prices and output, he pursued a policy of firm moderation. Part of his goal was to ensure that a low-cost producer such as Saudi Arabia did not push prices up so far that they opened doors to higher-cost competitors.

In this way he was honouring a compact with the US dating to the historic 1945 meeting between President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, founder of the modern Saudi kingdom. This exchanged an American guarantee of Saudi security for supplies of reasonably priced oil from what would become the world's