Suddenly, some Saudis were among the richest people on the planet. The outside world came in to Saudi Arabia.

unprecedented scale. “The outside world came in to Saudi Arabia,” said Harris.

Oil was at the heart of that transformation. The decade witnessed the birth of Saudi Aramco — still the Kingdom’s most important asset — when control of the oil company was bought back from its original American owners in a series of share purchases.

The Saudis called the process “participation,” in distinct contrast to the outright seizure of foreign oil assets by other Arab states, such as Libya and Iraq, in the same decade.

The Saudi government paid good hard cash in a series of share transactions that were described as “amicable.”

The price it paid has never been revealed, but informed speculation at the time put it at $1.5-$2 billion — roughly one-thousandth of the value range that Aramco hopes to realize in the forthcoming initial public offering.

The 1970s also saw the first moves toward a national, coordinated economic and industrial strategy in the Kingdom, with the mid-decade founding of the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), and the establishment of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu.

For the first time, the enormous wealth generated by the soaring oil price was being planned and directed centrally. When SABIC was set up by royal decree in 1976, it could legitimately be called the Kingdom’s first attempt to diversify away from oil dependency.

It aimed to convert the by-products of