ABSTRACT
President Gerald Ford said that the two Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members exercised "international responsibility and concern for the adverse impact of an oil increase on the world economy." At the OPEC conference in Quito in June 1974, it was decided to freeze posted prices for three months but to increase the profit-share level by 2 to 57 percent. Between the Bali conference and the Doha, Qatar, conference, the various OPEC members attempted to advance their positions. But Saudi Arabia also bitterly resented the OPEC members that, Ahmad Zaki Yamani asserted, were underselling their oil at the expense of Saudi Arabia. The market situation had not improved, and in fact there had been a drop in demand, when the OPEC conference opened in Geneva in the middle of June 1978. In the dramatic OPEC developments between 1975 and 1978 the main actor was no doubt Saudi Arabia, as personified by its minister of oil and mineral resources, Yamani.
