The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

For the last question, a tall, thoughtful professor stood up to observe how hard and contentious it was to make energy policy in the United States: the Congress fought with the President, the Senate with the House, various agencies with one another, everybody fought with everybody else. Was it any less contentious in Saudi Arabia? Would Yamani, he asked, describe the process by which oil policy was made inside Saudi Arabia? Smoothly and without even a moment’s hesitation, the oil minister replied, “We play it by ear.” The audience roared with laughter. It was an amusing answer, which captured the truth of improvisation in policymaking, whatever the government. Still, it was a little odd, coming from the self-proclaimed disciple of long-term thinking, who had been at the center of world oil decision making for a quarter of a century. Unbeknownst at the time to those in the audience, those words would be among the last of Yamani’s official utterances.