Sheikh Yamani - oil - and perfume in my hair ...

 Sheikh Yamani, so famous forty years ago as the world’s great ‘oil guru’, has died at the age of ninety. To mark his seventieth birthday on 30 June 2000 I went to interview him - and he gave me his own perfume to rub into my hair . . . Read this if you’re interested in oil - and Saudia Arabia - and whether what Yamani predicted in 2000 has come true . . . Skip to the finish if all you care about is his home-made perfume and how he persuaded me to rub it into my hair.

 Once upon a time Ahmed Zaki Yamani was one of the most powerful men on earth.  What he said, what he did, touched, and changed, all our lives.  From 1962 to 1986 he was the Saudi Arabian oil minister, the public face of the revolutionary policy that, in the early 1970s, sent the cost of petrol through the roof, threw the global economy into chaos and altered the balance of world power.  Today, he is sitting in a first floor drawing room at the top end of Knightsbridge, plying me with tiny, bitter chocolates (‘I make these myself’) and ladling spoonfuls of thick honey into my coffee.  ‘You like coffee Mecca-style?’ 

If you were around in his heyday, when, with a prince’s retinue and surrounded by armed guards, he crisscrossed the world explaining why and how the Gulf states must reduce oil production and raise oil prices (a five-fold increase in 1973 alone), you will recall the headline, ‘Yamani or your life!’, and recognise the face.   It was everywhere.   Twenty years on, amazingly, it hasn’t changed: still round, smooth, beguiling, smiling, with a neat goatee beard, thick black hair (unretouched, I reckon) and what my mother used to call ‘bedroom eyes’.   I can describe his voice for you exactly: it is David Suchet as Hercule Poirot.   Yamani has something of the Belgian detective’s manner about him too: he is dapper, courteous, softly-spoken, consciously charming, fully aware of his own genius.

 In the week that OPEC gathers in Vienna, I have come to see the Sheikh (the title is honorific: Yamani is a commoner) both to wish him a happy birthday and to pick his brains.   ‘Your excellency,’ I begin, ‘No one knows more about oil than you.’   He smiles and gives a courtly bow.  He doesn’t disagree. 

In Vienna the ministers from the eleven oil-producing countries have agreed a new production quota of 27.3 million barrels a day, an increase of 2.6 per cent but less than expected.   The price per barrel is now edging perilously close to the $ 30 mark.   What happens next?   ‘The price will stay high for the moment because of the high demand in the US, where they need two million barrels a day to refine to have about one million barrels a day of gasoline, and because of unexpected demands in Asia - for example, in China where they have requirement of 1.4 million barrels a day.  But down the road, as you call it, I have no illusion: I am positive there will be sometime in the future a crash in the price of oil.’ 

‘A crash?’

‘Oh yes.’  He smiles complacently.  I look dumbfounded.  If he is the all-seeing, all-knowing Poirot, I must be the unfortunate Captain Hastings.   ‘A crash.’   He is nodding and looking me in the eye.  Why am I not using the little grey cells?  ‘It is coming because oil companies who generated a huge profit from this price of oil are spending so much on exploration and developments.   The discoveries which took place in the last three months are very significant.  A huge field discovered in Khazakstan: 5.2 billion barrels of recoverable reserve, which mean they can easily produce 1 million barrels a day from that.  The Russians have discovered a huge field at the northern part of the Caspian Sea.’

I raise my eyebrows.  There has been no mention of this in my briefing notes.

‘It’s not yet announced,’ says Yamani, silkily, ‘but we know about it from different sources.  It is well above ten billion barrels of recoverable reserve.  They can easily produce two million barrels a day - easily.   In Yemen, in Egypt, they make discoveries.  Then you go to the west coast of Africa, to Angola, Nigeria . . .  It all adds up.’

He waits until I have finished scribbling.  ‘Now we add the Iraqi factor.  I don’t think the Iraqis will be out of the market for long.  Sooner or later the situation will change.  We don’t know when.  It is only a matter of time.  The Iraqis are  capable of producing at least 6.5 million barrels a day.  They have the reserves.  All they need are foreign companies, foreign capital - and I think they would open the door for that.

‘So, my friend, on the supply side it is easy to find oil and produce it.  And on the demand side there are so many new technologies, especially when it comes to automobiles.  The hybrid engines - the Japanese started that -  will cut gasoline consumption by something like thirty per cent.   Then - and it’s a proven technology - you have the cell-fuel cars.   This is coming before the end of the decade and will cut gasoline consumption by almost 100 per cent.  Imagine a country like the US, the largest consuming nation, where more than fifty per cent of their consumption is gasoline.  If you eliminate that, what will happen?

‘I can tell you with a degree of confidence that after five years there will be a sharp drop in the price of oil.  This, of course, if we don’t have some political surprises.  The middle east is not the most stable part of the world.  Two-thirds of the world reserve is still in the Gulf.  If anything happens there in one of the major producing nations, then definitely the price will shoot up to $40 or more.  The oil market is full of surprises.  That is the beauty of it.’

And in the longer term?

‘Thirty years from now there will be a huge amount of oil - and no buyers.  Thirty years from now, there is no problem with oil.  Oil will be left in the ground.  The Stone Age came to an end not because we had lack of stones, and the oil age will come to an end not because we have lack of oil.’

From the viewpoint of the west (and the environment) this is cheering - if unexpected - news, but what are the prospects for the Gulf?

‘We have no alternative but to reform on all fronts - economic, political, social, everything.  Every country in the middle east will be forced to do that.  If they don’t, they will be swallowed.   I am a Saudi and I know we will have serious economic difficulties ahead of us.’

Yamani came to prominence under King Faisal, who valued and promoted him.   He fell from grace under Faisal’s brother, the ailing King Fahd, who had long been wary of him and eventually dismissed him in 1986.   ‘I was dreaming of getting out.  I am grateful to King Fahd for fulfilling my dream.  That is all I can say.   I wish him good health.’   It is evident from the Sheikh’s body language and from what he says once my recorder is switched off that he sees no happy prospect for his country during the present King’s time.   He gives me a book his daughter has written.  The epigraph is a quotation from King Faisal: ‘‘In one generation we went from riding camels to riding Cadillacs.  The way we are wasting money, I fear the next generation will be riding camels again. 

How did Yamani, a middle-class boy without royal connections, end up as the most powerful man at the court of King Faisal?

 ‘I came from a scholarly environment.  My father was a great jurist, my uncles were professors at the Grand Mosque of Mecca where I studied literature, Arabic, jurisprudence.  From Mecca I went to Cairo and studied law.  Then I went to NYU and to Harvard.  I went back to my country where I was working for the government as a legal adviser in the tax department and the oil department, and I was writing in a lot of newspapers.  King Faisal asked me to come to him.  He was reading my articles.  I think he liked them.   To compare what he was to what we are now is not a good comparison.’

‘What was the essence of his greatness?’

‘He was modest in a glorious way.  He lived in homes that today a middle-class Saudi would not accept.  He never took money from the Treasury for himself.’  (Yamani says this as though this fact alone makes the king unique.)  ‘He was a reformer.  He was strongly for the education of women.  At that time it was forbidden.  He used to send girls from his own pocket to study outside the country.  One of his achievements was to abolish slavery, and I was an instrument in that.  He was a believer in the Arab cause and in Islam without being fanatic.  He was shrewd.  I am almost positive he can read minds.  He was so disciplined.  You can correct your watch on his movement.’

In March 1975 Faisal was assassinated, murdered in his palace by a young royal nephew.   Yamani was at the king’s side.   ‘When I remember how he was shot, how he fell into my arms, and the blood that was everywhere . . .  It was twenty-five years ago, but as I tell the story I cry.’   Yamani shakes his head mournfully, sniffs and smiles.   ‘The boy wanted to kill me too.’

1975 was a year of close calls.   In December, at the OPEC headquarters in Vienna,  Yamani and fellow Arab oil ministers were taken hostage by a group of pro-Palestinian terrorists led by Carlos Martinez, ‘The Jackal’.   ‘They discussed who was going to kill who.  They were all ready to kill the Iranian, but they said, “We don’t think Yamani deserves to be killed”.  Carlos said, “But it’s part of the plan.  He has to be killed.  I will kill him.”   Carlos told me, “I don’t want you to think this is against you.  We respect you.  We like you.  This is against your country.  If the Austrian government don’t publish our statement by five o’clock, at five-thirty I will kill you.”

‘I said, “Can I write my will?”   They gave me paper.  I had a pen.  I started writing my will.   It is a very strange thing.  I did not think about death.  I was thinking about my wife, my children, my mother.  What occupied my mind was not fear.  I was thinking what I wanted to achieve.  I was writing very quickly and suddenly I saw someone grabbing me.  I looked up and it was Carlos.  I looked at my watch.  It was 5.20.  I was angry.  I found myself arguing with him.  I said, “I have ten minutes more”.  He smiled and said, “No,  you have much longer than that.  They have published the statement.”’

Yamani laughs and claps his hands.  ‘What a feeling!  What it is inside you will not be known until the event is there.’

‘You no longer need bodyguards?’

‘I have some, but only for my children because I don’t want them to be hurt.  When you go to Italy or somewhere where they kidnap, you have to be careful.’   (As I come and go, I notice a burly figure, arms folded, stationed on the landing.  Possibly you have to be cautious in Knightsbridge too.)   He has homes in Sardinia, Switzerland, Jeddah, Mecca and Surrey.  I tell him I understand he is enormously rich. 

 ‘Not really enormously rich, no, honestly.  I have good real estate in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.  I have my investments, I am a good long-term investor, cautious, moderate.  I don’t gamble.  I don’t drink.  I don’t care for nightlife.  My houses are good enough, not extravagant.’  He gets about the world by private jet, but it is one he shares with friends.

If you ask him to name-drop he will.  Hirohito, Marcos, Suharto, the Shah of Iran, Sadaam Hussein, Franco, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Ayub Khan, he‘s known them all.   King Faisal apart (‘He is unique’), who stands out from the crowd?

‘I tell you a  story, my friend.  I was the inventor, the engineer of the idea of the North-South dialogue.  I never forget a conference we had - it was chaired by both Pierre Trudeau - he was a good friend of mine - and the President of Mexico.  There were twenty-one heads of state and government at this conference.  I can tell you without any reservation that among the twenty-one there were only two who did their homework and were shining people, wothy of the highest respect: Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher - the two women!  You raise your hat for them and you bow.’

He has lived through exciting times.

‘Difficult, difficult.’

‘But you miss them, don’t you?’

‘No.  Too much light hurts the eyes.  If you get away from it and have just enough to see your way you are a happier person.

‘I am a husband.  My wife travels with me everywhere.  I am a father and grandfather.  I collect and study manuscripts.  I cook.  I design my own cloth.  I am an expert in perfume.’

I look surprised.

‘Oh yes.  Making perfume in the Arab tradition is an art like impressionist painting.  In the old days when a man is in love with a girl he will make a perfume for her which reflects his feelings.

‘Let me tell you about a perfume created by a man called Al Kindi almost thirteen centuries ago.  He created it for the wife of Haruna Rashid and she took it and, because it is pure oil, she put it in her mouth, and when the Caliph kissed her he was fascinated!   Of course, she asked Al Kindi not to give the perfume to any other woman.  In time, she passed away and all the ladies of Baghdad said, “Now she is dead, give us this perfume.”  Al Kindi would not give it to them, but he left the formula and - yes, my friend - I have a laboratory and I was able to reproduce it.  It is fantastic!’ 

Poirot could not have unravelled the mystery more memorably.  But there is a coup de theatre to come.  Sheikh Yamani raises his finger and beckons me towards him.   ‘Give me your hands.’

He produces a perfume bottle from the drawer of his desk and pours the thick sweet-smelling oil onto my palms.  ‘Rub it very hard.  Put it in your hair.  Yes, now.  It is very exotic.  It is pure oil.  It will wait on you for a long, long time.’

I do as I am told and, an hour later, when I am sitting on the Piccadilly Line attracting curious glances, I think to myself, ‘If he can persuade a middle-aged Englishman to do that, he must have a certain something.’  Clearly, even now, you don’t say no to Yamani.