OPEC Mourns Ex-Saudi Arabia Petroleum Minister,Yamani

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), yesterday expressed sadness over the death of a former Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Sheikh Ahmed Yamani, who passed away at the age of 90.

Secretary General of the organisation, Dr. Sanusi Barkindo, in a condolence message, said that Yamani was an outstanding icon of the world of oil and the leading light in OPEC during his eventful years as a minister and OPEC leader.

Describing him as a true OPEC legend, a man who bestrode the meeting rooms and corridors of OPEC, and the global oil industry, during his almost quarter of a century as minister of oil of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Barkindo said that his tenure represented the longest period of service for an OPEC minister.

He added that between March 9, 1962 and October 5, 1986 when he was minister, Yamani was part of many of the pivotal moments that shaped the organisation’s history.

Quoting Daniel Yergin in his seminal book on the oil industry, “The Prize”, Barkindo noted that “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,”

Born in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 1930, Yamani earned a bachelor’s degree in law at Cairo University in 1951, a master’s degree in law at New York University in 1955 and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1956.

Only six years after graduating from Harvard, he took up the reins of his country’s petroleum ministry.

In April 1962, he flew to OPEC’s new headquarters in Geneva to attend the fourth meeting of the OPEC conference, his first as new minister, and it proved to be an early test of his resilience and foresight.