Finally, late one night in the spring of 1976, they came to agreement in Yamani’s suite at the Al-Yamama Hotel in Riyadh. Forty-three years earlier in Riyadh, after Standard of California had reluctantly agreed to make an up-front payment of $175,000 for the right to wildcat in the trackless desert, Ibn Saud had ordered the original concession document to be signed. By 1976, the proven reserves in that desert were estimated at 149 billion barrels—more than a quarter of total free world reserves. And now the concession was to be disbanded once and for all. “It was truly the end of the era,”
