During the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. Arab OPEC members also extended the embargo to other countries that supported Israel including the Netherlands, Portugal, and South Africa. The embargo both banned petroleum exports to the targeted nations and introduced cuts in oil production. Several years of negotiations between oil-producing nations and oil companies had already destabilized a decades-old pricing system, which exacerbated the embargo’s effects.
Effects
The effects of the embargo were immediate. OPEC forced oil companies to increase payments drastically. The price of oil quadrupled by 1974 from US$3 to nearly US$12 per 42 gallon barrel ($75 per cubic meter), equivalent in 2018 dollars to a price rise from $17 to $61 per barrel.
The crisis eased when the embargo was lifted in March 1974 after negotiations at the Washington Oil Summit, but the effects lingered throughout the 1970s. The dollar price of energy increased again the following year, amid the weakening competitive position of the dollar in world markets.
The Arab oil embargo ended the long period of prosperity in the West that had begun in 1945, throwing the world's economy into the steepest economic contraction since the Great Depression.
Impact on oil exporting nations
This price increase had a dramatic effect on oil exporting nations, for the countries of the Middle East who had long been dominated by the industrial powers were seen to have taken control of a vital commodity. The oil-exporting nations began to accumulate vast wealth.
Some of the income was dispensed in the form of aid to other underdeveloped nations whose economies had been caught between higher oil prices and lower prices for their own export commodities, amid shrinking Western demand. Much went for arms purchases that exacerbated political tensions, particularly in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia spent over 100 billion dollars in the ensuing decades for helping spread its fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabism.
The oil embargo led a sudden interest in the Palestinian issue. On 8 November 1973, Kissinger became the first Secretary of State to meet with a Saudi leader since 1953 as he met King Faisal to ask him to end the embargo. Within two week of the embargo being launched, all of the foreign ministers of the nations of the European Economic Community met in a conference to issue a statement calling for Israel "to end the territorial occupation which has maintained since the conflict of 1967".
OPEC-member states raised the prospect of nationalization of oil company holdings. Most notably, Saudi Arabia nationalized Aramco in 1980 under the leadership of Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani.
Impact on the oil importing countries
The embargo had a negative influence on the US economy by causing immediate demands to address the threats to U.S. energy security. Macroeconomic problems consisted of both inflationary and deflationary impacts. The average US retail price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose 43% from 38.5¢ in May 1973 to 55.1¢ in June 1974. State governments asked citizens not to put up Christmas lights.
The Soviet Union was not a beneficiary of the oil crisis. The crisis prompted the USSR to raise energy prices within the Council on Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA).
The embargo was not uniform across Western Europe. Of the nine members of the European Economic Community (EEC), the Netherlands faced a complete embargo. By contrast Britain and France received almost uninterrupted supplies. That was their reward for refusing to allow the US to use their airfields and stopping arms and supplies to both the Arabs and the Israelis.
Japan was hard hit since it imported 90% of its oil from the Middle East. It had a stockpile good for 55 days, and another 20-day supply was en route. Facing its most serious crisis since 1945 the government ordered a 10% cut in the consumption of industrial oil and electricity. Moscow tried to take advantage by promising energy assistance if Japan returned the Kurile Islands. Tokyo refused.
The oil shock destroyed the economy of South Vietnam. A spokesman for Nguyễn Văn Thiệu admitted in a TV interview that the government was being "overwhelmed" by the inflation caused by the oil shock. In December 1973, Vietcong sappers attacked and destroyed the petroleum depot of Nha Be, further depleting fuel sources.
Consequences
OPEC soon lost its preeminent position, and in 1981, its production was surpassed by that of other countries. Additionally, its own member nations were divided. Saudi Arabia, trying to recover market share, increased production, pushing prices down, shrinking or eliminating profits for high-cost producers. The world price, which had peaked during the 1979 energy crisis at nearly $40 per barrel, decreased during the 1980s to less than $10 per barrel.
The embargo encouraged new venues for energy exploration, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus. Exploration in the Caspian Basin and Siberia became profitable. Cooperation changed into a far more adversarial relationship as the USSR increased its production. By 1980, the Soviet Union had become the world's largest producer.
Heavily populated, impoverished countries, whose economies were largely dependent on oil—including Mexico, Nigeria, Algeria, and Libya—did not prepare for a market reversal that left them in sometimes desperate situations.
When reduced demand and increased production glutted the world market in the mid-1980s, oil prices plummeted and the cartel lost its unity. Mexico (a non-member), Nigeria, and Venezuela, whose economies had expanded in the 1970s, faced near-bankruptcy, and even Saudi Arabian economic power was significantly weakened. The divisions within OPEC made concerted action more difficult. As of 2015, OPEC has never approached its earlier dominance.
Megathreads and spaces to hang out:
- ❤️ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube
- 💖 Come talk in the New Weekly Queer thread
- 💛 Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread
- 💚 Come and talk in the Daily Bloomer Thread
- ⭐️ September Movie Nominations ⭐️
reminders:
- 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
- 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
Harvard logic:
Tearing down an Israeli flag
Unspeakable act of antisemitic violence.
Doxxing, assault, harassment, death threats, fired from jobs and calls for expulsion
*crickets*
Profile pics really changed how this site feels for me. I basically never noticed names before, I didn't remember any users. Each post was just a self contained thing.
Now I recognize people, and past interactions impact how I feel about new posts. Sometimes that's nice but sometimes it sucks
it was pretty fun but the people who never switched back kinda bothered me and I can't imagine how much they bothered a certain dirty lil guy.
New Megathread Nerds!!!
-
🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
-
🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can go here nerd
@aaaaaaadjsf@hexbear.net @Abraxiel@hexbear.net @Abstraction@hexbear.net @Acute_Engles@hexbear.net @AnarchaPrincess@hexbear.net @AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net @Alaskaball@hexbear.net @AlicePraxis@hexbear.net @Aliveelectricwire@hexbear.net @artificialset@hexbear.net @asa_red_heathen@hexbear.net @autismdragon@hexbear.net @Awoo@hexbear.net @bbnh69420@hexbear.net @BirdBrained@hexbear.net @buh@hexbear.net @Catradora_Stalinism@hexbear.net @CDommunist@hexbear.net @Cherufe@hexbear.net @ClimateChangeAnxiety@hexbear.net @clover@hexbear.net @Comp4@hexbear.net @ComradeCmdrPiggy@hexbear.net @ComradeEchidna@hexbear.net @context@hexbear.net @corgiwithalaptop@hexbear.net @CrispyFern@hexbear.net @CriticalOtaku@hexbear.net @Cromalin@hexbear.net @CyborgMarx@hexbear.net @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net @Dolores@hexbear.net @drinkinglakewater@hexbear.net @Dryad@hexbear.net @ElChapoDeChapo@hexbear.net @ElGosso@hexbear.net @el_principito@hexbear.net @EmmaGoldman@hexbear.net @FALGSConaut@hexbear.net @Flinch@hexbear.net @forcequit@hexbear.net @Frank@hexbear.net @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net @FuckyWucky@hexbear.net @GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net @Goadstool@hexbear.net @GorbinOutOverHere@hexbear.net @Grownbravy@hexbear.net @GVAGUY3@hexbear.net @HarryLime@hexbear.net @hexaflexagonbear@hexbear.net @Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net @Hooray4dolphins@hexbear.net @HornyOnMain@hexbear.net @InevitableSwing@hexbear.net @iridaniotter@hexbear.net @I_HATE_JOHN_CALVIN@hexbear.net @jabrd@hexbear.net @JamesConeZone@hexbear.net @Kaputnik@hexbear.net @kristina@hexbear.net @LesbianLiberty@hexbear.net @Magician@hexbear.net @MaxOS@hexbear.net @Melina@hexbear.net @Mindfury@hexbear.net @mkultrawide@hexbear.net @Nagarjuna@hexbear.net @Nakoichi@hexbear.net @PaulSmackage@hexbear.net @plinky@hexbear.net @Pluto@hexbear.net @PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net @President_Obama@hexbear.net @Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net @Redcuban1959@hexbear.net @RION@hexbear.net @RNAi@hexbear.net @Rojo27@hexbear.net @SeventyTwoTrillion@hexbear.net @solaranus@hexbear.net @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net @Sickos@hexbear.net @silent_water@hexbear.net @Sphere@hexbear.net @spring_rabbit@hexbear.net @take_five_seconds@hexbear.net @Teekeeus@hexbear.net @Tervell@hexbear.net @UlyssesT@hexbear.net @VHS@hexbear.net @viva_la_juche@hexbear.net @WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net @Wheaties@hexbear.net @WhyEssEff@hexbear.net @WIIHAPPYFEW@hexbear.net @wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net @wombat@hexbear.net @Zoift@hexbear.net @Zuzak@hexbear.net
@thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net @WhoaSlowDownMaurice@hexbear.net @Quimby@hexbear.net
@CARCOSA@hexbear.net @liberal@hexbear.net @ella@hexbear.net @all_or_nothing@hexbear.net @KenBonesWildRide@hexbear.net @KiraNerys@hexbear.net @TomboyShulk@hexbear.net @DuckNuckem@hexbear.net @SapGreen@hexbear.net @Zangief@hexbear.net @scumlord@hexbear.net @COMMENT@hexbear.net @Antisocial_Socialist@hexbear.net @DOPESMOKERDENG@hexbear.net @BoarAvoir@hexbear.net
No current struggle session discussion here on the new general megathread, i will ban you from the comm and remove your comment, have a good day/night :meow-coffee:
-
Omg lol i hadn't thought of that. You can spit in the face of every muslim in the country as much as you want, but voicing your opposition to genocide, not even trying to stop it just saying "i would prefer not" is a crime against the honkey state.
Talking with my parents, Palestine came up. Dad starts listing off all of the atrocities the Israelis committed and my mom goes
"The original settlers should all have been shot immediately"
i go on r/196 when i take a shit because sometimes there's a half-decent meme
today there was a '3rd party voting' meme, which whatever, they're fucking libs---but a motherfucker in the comments characterizing not voting biden as not voting for someone you 'agree with 90%'
90%??????? I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU
I have been posting anti-israel onion articles in the midwest onion comm from my lemmy account, and in the first 4 minutes they had 3 downvotes, the lemmy zionists are mad lol
"One day there was an anonymous present sitting on my doorstep—Volume One of Capital by Karl Marx, in a brown paper bag. A joke? Serious? And who had sent it? I never found out. Late that night, naked in bed, I leafed through it. The beginning was impenetrable, I couldn't understand it, but when I came to the part about the lives of the workers—the coal miners, the child laborers—I could feel myself suddenly breathing more slowly. How angry he was. Page after page. Then I turned back to an earlier section, and I came to a phrase that I'd heard before, a strange, upsetting, sort of ugly phrase: this was the section on "commodity fetishism," "the fetishism of commodities." I wanted to understand that weird-sounding phrase, but I could tell that, to understand it, your whole life would probably have to change.
"His explanation was very elusive. He used the example that people say, "Twenty yards of linen are worth two pounds." People say that about every thing that it has a certain value. This is worth that. This coat, this sweater, this cup of coffee: each thing worth some quantity of money, or some number of other things—one coat, worth three sweaters, or so much money—as if that coat, suddenly appearing on the earth, contained somewhere inside itself an amount of value, like an inner soul, as if the coat were a fetish, a physical object that contains a living spirit. But what really determines the value of a coat? The coat's price comes from its history, the history of all the people involved in making it and selling it and all the particular relationships they had. And if we buy the coat, we, too, form relationships with all those people, and yet we hide those relationships from our own awareness by pretending we live in a world where coats have no history but just fall down from heaven with prices marked inside. "I like this coat," we say, "It's not expensive," as if that were a fact about the coat and not the end of a story about all the people who made it and sold it, "I like the pictures in this magazine."
"A naked woman leans over a fence. A man buys a magazine and stares at her picture. The destinies of these two are linked. The man has paid the woman to take off her clothes, to lean over the fence. The photograph contains its history—the moment the woman unbuttoned her shirt, how she felt, what the photographer said. The price of the magazine is a code that describes the relationships between all these people—the woman, the man, the publisher, the photographer—who commanded, who obeyed. The cup of coffee contains the history of the peasants who picked the beans, how some of them fainted in the heat of the sun, some were beaten, some were kicked.
"For two days I could see the fetishism of commodities everywhere around me. It was a strange feeling. Then on the third day I lost it, it was gone, I couldn't see it anymore."
-- wallace shawn, most famous from the princess bride and the toy story films
BREAKING: @Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net arrested in Rauma in southwest Finland
https://twitter.com/L_S_poliisi/status/1714592267606933795
A #Police patrol was dispatched to #Rauma last night where the guy in the photo had exhausted himself out on the street in the city centre. The owl was lying on the ground with a glazed look on his face, unable to fly. The patrol made an "arrest as according to policing protocols" to protect the owl, and...
ShowAll my sex workers and porn performers and drug dealers are very loudly screaming that the killing needs to stop and raising money where they can, while all the respectable people in my life are at best silent and at worst actively genocidal, so i think we really need to revisit views on the so called "Lumpenproletariat".
When your white centrist coworker thinks they're a radical because they repeat coopted phrases from memes but they loose their shit when you try pointing out their misogyn/racism/xenophobia and your fellow white coworkers who think they're "progressive" all agree with them
I got my keffiyeh! Most people were very cool about it and I found some people who support Palestine. I only had one person have an issue about it but woo boy. All it took was a picture of it for this "progressive liberal" to start raging about BLM and antifa and no of course I have no problem with the moderate Muslims but I hate seeing them when I go outside.