ABSTRACT
In October and November of 1973, The Netherlands was confronted with a series of threatening Arab moves. Following the drastic rise in the price of oil on October 16, came the decision of the Arab opec states a day later to reduce oil production by 5% each month as long as the Western countries continued to support Israel. Almost a week later, The Hague was confronted with a full embargo, even though in the end not all the Arab oil states joined in. On October 18 Saudi Arabia itself announced that oil production would not shrink by 5% but by 10% monthly until all the Arab demands had been met with. On November 4 the situation appeared to worsen even further when the oapec countries took the decision to reduce production by 25% from September levels. By this time, it began to be clear that The Netherlands stood alone.
