At the end of March, OPEC met. Spot crude prices had risen by 30 percent; products, by as much as 60 percent. OPEC decided that its members could add to their official prices whatever surcharges and premiums “they deem justifiable in light of their own circumstances.” What that really meant, Yamani bluntly allowed, was a “free-for-all.” The exporters were abandoning any notion of an official price structure. They would charge whatever the market would bear. And now there would be two games in the world oil market. One was “leapfrog”: the producers vying with each other to raise prices. The
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