Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XXXVI, Energy Crisis, 1969–1974

345. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, March 29, 1974, 5:15 p.m.

SECRETARY’S MEETING WITH OIL COMPANY EXECUTIVES

• PRESENT
  • The Secretary of State—Henry A. Kissinger
  • Industry Representatives:
    • W. R. Young, Vice Chairman, Texaco
    • Harold Haynes, Chairman, Standard Oil of California
    • J. K. Jamieson, Chairman, Exxon
    • William T. Tavoulareas, President, Mobil
    • Leon Hess, Chairman, Amerada Hess
    • B. O. Anderson, Chairman, Atlantic Richfield
    • Dr. John Kircher, President, Continental Oil
    • John McCloy, Milbank and Tweed
    • B. R. Dorsey, Chairman, Gulf Oil
  • U.S. Representatives:
    • Kenneth Rush, Deputy Secretary of State
    • William Clements, Deputy Secretary of Defense
    • William Donaldson, Under Secretary of State
    • Joseph Sisco, Under Secretary for Political Affairs
    • Brent Scowcroft, The White House
    • Carlyle Maw, Legal Adviser, State
    • William Simon, Administrator, Federal Energy Office
    • Charles Cooper, Deputy Assistant to the President, NSC
    • Thomas Kauper, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust

Proceedings

Secretary Kissinger: Gentlemen, we haven’t met in a while. I thought after talking with Jack McCloy that we might exchange ideas on where we stand.

The transcript taken here isn’t going to go anywhere, except into my own personal files. If it makes you nervous, we will stop.

Mr. Jamieson: No.

Secretary Kissinger: You may not realize what an achievement it is in this building to keep notes from being made in 500 copies.

Mr. Jamieson: We are having a little of that difficulty on the Hill right now.

Mr. Rush: Jack, you make your notes, don’t you?

Mr. McCloy: I just put down the names of all these characters across here so we are sure we know who we are.

Secretary Kissinger: You know everybody, don’t you?

Do me a favor and say you don’t recognize Simon.

(Laughter)

That’s the only thing that will instill a measure of humility in the czar. (Laughter)

Everybody know the group that is on this side of the table?

Mr. McCloy: I didn’t catch the name of the man with all the hair. I guess I’m envious.

Mr. Cooper: Chuck Cooper.

Secretary Kissinger: He has a combined position with Flanigan and me, in the White House.

Well, I can give you a brief wrap-up of where we stand on the political situation. And then Jack has told me of your concern with what some of our friends are doing in the various countries. I would like to hear about that from you—and tell you some of our tentative ideas in this direction.

On the diplomatic front, I think the situation has improved since we met in the fall. The big issue now is whether we can get disengagement between Syria and Israel; the big issue because, as you know, the Syrians are a more radical state than Egypt. If we can draw them into any agreement with Israel, it will make it easier for the moderates in the Arab world, among whom I count especially Sadat and Faisal, to pursue their course. And then we can keep the diplomacy going, hopefully, by getting Sadat concentrating on the Egyptian-Israeli settlement.

Our view is if we can keep this going, we can keep the situation substantially defused.

On the other hand, if the Syrian-Israeli disengagement should not come to pass, then I think we are in for another rough time. Then I think the Syrians are going to start fighting. I think the Saudis at a minimum will support them, whatever the Egyptians do. And we will be in a hell of a situation.

Now, an additional complication is that the Soviets feel that we are squeezing them out of the area, which is not exactly true. But it wouldn’t break our heart if their influence were reduced in the area. And they are moving heaven and earth to get into the negotiation.

Now, the difficulty getting them into the negotiation is that the one thing that all the parties in the Middle East are agreed on, a point of perfect unanimity among the Israelis and the Arabs, is that they don’t want the Soviets part of the negotiation. Not even the Syrians want them in the negotiation. I don’t have to tell you gentlemen what Faisal’s view is of Soviet participation. And Sadat is rapidly approaching Faisal’s state of mind on this subject.

On the other hand, if we don’t find some formula by which the Soviets can at a minimum save face, they have it in their power to make it very tough for any Arab government to settle.

Now, their strategy is to lump every issue together, get it back to Geneva, to maneuver us into a position where we become the lawyers of Israel and they become the defenders of the Arab point of view. And this achieves a dual objective for them, because it sort of isolates us and it forces Sadat back into the radical camp, and therefore interrupts the rapprochement between Sadat and us, which in turn is one of the chief bases of our Middle East policy, and that in turn brings enormous pressures on Faisal.

So this is one reason why we are insisting on doing one issue at a time, and why we will not be caught debating frontiers, Jerusalem, Palestine. Because this Israeli government can make only one decision a month, or one decision at a time. If we lump all these things together, and if our ability to produce gets linked to a big, sweeping program, we are licked.

Our strength with the Arabs is that we have kept every promise we have made. And that in turn has depended on the fact that we have never made a promise we could not keep. And that in turn depends that we don’t get into too sweeping projects.

Jack and I have talked about the importance of Jerusalem and we have it in mind, and at the right moment we will surface.

But there is nothing to be gained by meeting formal extreme demands. That is playing the Soviet game. And we are now at the point where every Arab leader, even Asad, accepts that as our strategy. And as long as we can produce, that is the big thing, they will go along with it. This is why if we fall on our face at the Syrian disengagement, then that whole strategy goes down the drain, too. And then we will be in trouble.

But until that happens, I think we can get the support of Sadat and Faisal. I think even Boumedienne—whom we are going to see when he comes here.²

So this is the political situation.

I would just like to make the appeal I made to you before³ and which, from my information, has been heeded. I have not got any intelligence reports of oil executives getting into politics. And I just would like to repeat again—please keep your executives from falling in with what seems easy but really is in the long term explosive—sort of pushing the Arabs into more than the system will absorb in any one month. None of them have done it. I have got no complaints.

Mr. Jamieson: I think to the contrary, Mr. Secretary. To the best of my knowledge, all of the oil people now are saying they are in complete support of everything you are attempting to do.

Secretary Kissinger: That is my impression. We haven’t seen one single intelligence report of the kind that I mentioned to you when you first met with me. So this is not said critically. This is in a way said gratefully. If you can keep up that posture, I think we have a good chance of moving forward.

For those of you who know Faisal, at the last meeting with me, Saqqaf said afterwards it was the most successful meeting with a foreigner he ever had.⁴ And I’ll tell you the truth, that wasn’t self-evident to me. I said “How do you conclude that?” He said, “Well, normally when somebody talks to him, he sits there picking lint off his robe. Did you notice—he didn’t pick any lint off his robe, and he looked straight at you at all times.”

Mr. Jamieson: You made an impression.

Secretary Kissinger: I am waiting now for the time he picks lint off my coat.

Then I said to Saqqaf—Saqqaf said, “I hope you understood that he told you he was going to lift the embargo.” I said, “Frankly, I didn’t understand that, because he told me he wasn’t going to lift the embargo.” Saqqaf said, “But that was because he intends to lift the embargo. He was afraid if he told you he was going to lift it, you were going to leak it to the press. And his whole manner of telling you he wasn’t going to lift it meant he was going to lift it.”

So you people who deal with him all the time now have my full sympathy. I didn’t read him correctly. But Saqqaf was right. Faisal was very active in getting the embargo lifted.

So for the time being, particularly under the influence of Sadat, and supported to some extent by Faisal, we are not in bad shape in the Arab world.

But a lot depends now on how we are going to do in the next month.

Mr. Jamieson: What about the radicals in Libya and Iraq?

Secretary Kissinger: The ones in Libya we hope that the Egyptians will take care of to some considerable extent. We are beginning to have some non-publicized talks with some members of the Revolutionary Council in Libya. With respect to Iraq, the best we can do right now is to isolate them—and there it depends on Syria. If we can get Syria into a disengagement with Israel, that will effectively split them from Iraq. Then we have to work with the Saudis to deal with the Emirates.

The Kuwaitis have invited me to visit them on my next trip to the Middle East—I will go there.

So the best we can do with Iraq is to contain them.

I do not exclude, however, that if we can keep this momentum, and it becomes fashionable to deal with us, that the Iraqis will not be able to resist seeing what dicker they can make.

For example, for some idiotic reason, because they were on some list, we sent them a letter explaining to them what we were doing at the energy conference. It was a pure mistake on our part. It shouldn’t have been done. But we sent it to all OPEC countries, and of course they are one of them. Well, that led to a ten-page reply by their leader, which wasn’t too friendly—but if he didn’t want to have a dialogue with us, he didn’t have to send a ten-page letter.⁵

That is not yet ready. I think this depends on, first, whether we can get Syria moving away from the Soviets a little bit. Second—what sort of relation we can establish with Saudi Arabia. Third—what we can do with Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and some of the areas into which we will begin moving on my next trip to the Middle East. And then I think we will be ready to see what we can do with Iraq.

But Libya—there are two members of the Revolutionary Committee with whom we are going to be in contact next month. But that is not to be talked about.

Mr. Jamieson: I understand.

Well, from our standpoint, Mr. Secretary, we certainly hope that you can keep this momentum rolling that you have got under way now, because that, as you say, is certainly the key to the whole situation out there. And if, unfortunately, that momentum is slowed down, what the reaction is going to be it is hard to predict, as we see it.

Secretary Kissinger: I agree.

Now let’s talk about these various oil deals that Jack mentioned.

Mr. Jamieson: The bilateral deals?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes.

Mr. Jamieson: All right.

I have a whole list of them here that are either being talked about or some of them presumably have been consummated.

Do you want me to run down kind of the laundry list?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes—just a few to get a feel.

Mr. Jamieson: We can start with Abu Dhabi, and probably the most important one there, and the one that perhaps led to a lot of our difficulties, was the original deal that Japan Lines made for an eight-year commitment. The volumes were firm in that report. But they were the ones that really triggered the prices originally.

Jumping down, over to Iran, there is a 100,000 barrel a day deal—I can give you a copy of this, Bill. I can leave this memo with you.

Mr. Clements: Good.

Mr. Jamieson: Or with the State Department.

There is a 100,000 barrel a day deal that the UK made for one year, starting in 1974. This is for $242 million of industrial products.

Secretary Kissinger: How are these deals made—for cash?

Mr. Jamieson: No. This is really a barter deal—crude for materials. Now, we understand that the Iranians have requested that the UK accelerate their liftings in the second quarter of ‘74, which leads us to believe they are having some difficulty in getting their auction oil lifted. People are starting to resist that price.

Mr. Clements: This would be through the consortium, Ken?

Mr. Jamieson: No. This is a direct deal with the Iranian Oil Company.

Mr. Tavoulareas: This is BP—handling the deal. They didn’t make the deal, but they are going to handle the oil.

Mr. Jamieson: The next deal is the one that the Germans are presumably making. This is a consortium of West German companies dealing with the National Iran Oil Company, to build a 500,000 barrel-a-day refinery, plus a petrochemical complex. Our understanding of that deal is that every time the Germans go back, the ante is raised, and the Shah keeps raising the ante on them. So there is some doubt that the deal will be consummated.

We understand they have made a deal to supply some crude to a refinery in Madras and financially participate in an expansion of that refinery.

Austria has been in trying to get Iranian participation in an Austrian refinery, but so far they have not accomplished anything.

And then there is another report that there is a group of American companies, which includes Cities Service, Koch and several other smaller companies—building a 500,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Iran. We are not sure where that stands.

Mr. Hess: Ken, I understand that is dead.

Mr. Jamieson: Probably the same thing as the German project.

Secretary Kissinger: Is any of this supported by their governments, or how does that happen—these deals?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, the German deal, the German Government was pushing them on that. We have it from pretty good authority, from German Government people, they are getting cold in the deal.

Secretary Kissinger: Why are they getting cold on that?

Mr. Jamieson: Because the Shah keeps raising the ante all the time, making it less and less a target.

Mr. Clements: It is a moving target both ways. There is an element where these deals started when the price was extremely high, and there has been some dilution of that price. And so the thing is a moving target another way—that the world market price, Ken, as you well know, is moving down, and these negotiations started at a much higher level.

Mr. Jamieson: That is right. I don’t think that applies particularly to this German deal, Bill. I think it is more the fact that the Shah keeps raising the commercial terms all the time, wanting more and more plant involved. It started off as really a rather simple plant. It is now up to $5 billion.

Secretary Kissinger: Are we as a government remiss in any of these things?

Mr. Jamieson: I wouldn’t think so.

Secretary Kissinger: What are you gentlemen doing?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, there is not much we can do about deals as far as objecting to them, when it gets into a government to government relationship. When they are using some vehicle, like the Germans have used this consortium of German companies, there is not much we can do about it.

Mr. Tavoulareas: On the one we are talking about now, I visited the German Government. When they first talked it was a simple refinery. It looked like it was escalating because of additional equipment to $5 billion turned over to the government in, I think, a ten-year period. If they tried to put that cost into a barrel of product so that it is spread all over the Middle East, we would start a new round of escalation in terms of product.

Mr. Jamieson: We can move to Iraq. They have agreed to supply Japan with 180,000 barrels a day of crude and 140,000 barrels a day of products for ten years in return for a $1 billion credit for an LPG processing plant, a refinery, a petrochemical plant, and a fertilizer plant, and an aluminum plant. They have agreed to supply Sweden with 13.5 thousand barrels a day for the last three quarters of 1974. And France is to put up $1 billion to finance Iraqi armament and industrialization plans. Iraq will submit lists of arms needs, industrialization, and technological assistance, especially in the field of oil industry, on a stage-by-stage basis. Iraq is to pay cash at the end of each stage and then deliver an equivalent amount of crude for which France is to pay cash.

Mr. Clements: On that one, Ken, are you and some of your associates encouraging that sort of thing through some of the French—like French Petroleum?

Mr. Jamieson: Encouraging the participation in this kind of deal? We are absolutely opposed to it.

Mr. Clements: Are you really?

Mr. Jamieson: Oh, yes. What they are doing is peddling oil that they have in essence stolen from us.

Mr. Clements: I know that. But I thought you might be using, you know, FPC over there—Francaise Petroleum—as a vehicle.

Mr. Jamieson: The French Government is using CFP as a vehicle. But certainly we are not participating in those deals at all, Bill.

Mr. Clements: I see. I want to make it clear, if you were, so Henry would know it. If you are not, it needs to be said so.

Mr. Jamieson: No. These are all French Government deals, using Iraq and CFP. CFP has been the prime one in Iraq, because they were partners in the old Iraq Petroleum.

Mr. Clements: IPC.

Mr. Jamieson: Yes.

In Kuwait, in January of this year France announced that she was on the verge of concluding a 20-year contract for 5.6 billion barrels of crude, but nothing has been announced confirming the deal.

Secretary Kissinger: Are these deals at prices that will turn out to be too high?

Mr. Jamieson: They could be. The French arms deal—

Secretary Kissinger: Couldn’t happen to nicer people.

Mr. Jamieson: There is one later with Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Tavoulareas: Looks like it did.

Mr. Jamieson: There is a report of a barter deal with Japan, but we haven’t got any information on the time or volumes involved.

Moving down to Oman, a Japanese trading company, C. Itoh, made a contract there for 30,000 barrels a day.

Going to Saudi Arabia, there is another French deal, which I am sure everybody is familiar with, including crude-for-arms and industrial goods, for a three-year supply.

Secretary Kissinger: The French claim that the reason they are behaving this way is because Aramco refused to sell them oil or guarantee them purchases in 1971. Is there anything to that?

Mr. Jamieson: Not to my knowledge.

Secretary Kissinger: You remember that paper?⁶

Mr. Tavoulareas: I can remember the French at one time came to us and asked us for an unbelievably low option price on Aramco, some years ago. “Will you take a commitment to lift for a period of time?” “No, we only want an option to buy from you in the event we get disturbed someplace else.” That was about four years ago.

Mr. Jamieson: Speaking for our own company, we are certainly putting Aramco crude into France.

Secretary Kissinger: But their argument—Bill, do you remember—Jobert handed me a paper.

Mr. Simon: I sent you an answer to that. There was no foundation to that charge whatsoever that we could find.

Secretary Kissinger: All right.

Mr. Jamieson: Now, on this particular deal, we think the French—they agreed to buy it at five cents a barrel over posting, posted price plus a nickel, which was an awfully high price.

Mr. Tavoulareas: “We pay a very high price and we will overcharge you for our goods.” But it raises the oil price.

Mr. Jamieson: It is hard to get any real commercial feel on these swap or barter deals.

Secretary Kissinger: They pay for it by charging exorbitantly for their own goods.

Mr. Jamieson: Right.

Secretary Kissinger: Then what benefit is it to the producing country?

Mr. Jamieson: He doesn’t look at it quite that way. I think they are again probably looking at it in a political context.

Mr. Tavoulareas: They also set a very high price to hold up to other people.

Mr. Simon: That is the real danger.

Secretary Kissinger: So the producing countries use this as a means of getting a high price.

Mr. Jamieson: They say this is the market price for the oil.

Mr. Clements: It becomes a reference point.

Mr. Jamieson: Some of these ones I mentioned are speculative.

Taiwan is seeking an oil-for-refinery arrangement in Saudi Arabia. We think this is doubtful.

The UK began negotiations in January 1974 for 200,000 barrels-aday for ten years, in return for industrial goods and services.

Thailand has been trying to negotiate for 30,000 barrels a day for the remainder of 1974. It has not been able to come to a price agreement.

SAG is seriously considering a a 50–50 partnership with Shell for a 500,000 barrel-a-day refinery to be located in Saudi Arabia.

India has made a deal—we think it is about 35,000 barrels a day for the remainder of 1974.

Secretary Kissinger: Can we get this list?

Mr. Jamieson: We will leave it with you.⁷

Italy concluded a three-year 65,000 barrel-a-day purchase.

Secretary Kissinger: What is the implication of that for the United States—of all these deals?

Mr. Jamieson: The implication is that more and more oil that was Aramco oil is being diverted to these other countries on government-to-government deals. So we are losing effectively oil that was under our control before.

Mr. Rush: Is there any price pattern?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, I would suspect that most of these deals are made right about posted price.

Mr. Tavoulareas: Or market value.

Mr. Jamieson: Or market value.

Mr. Rush: Then they don’t have a reference point. If it fluctuates up and down, they have no reference point.

Mr. Jamieson: The Saudis are saying that the reference point is their sales—sales of the government oil company. And they are saying that that reference point is really 93 percent of posted.

Mr. Tavoulareas: Therefore if we buy crude from them, we should pay the same price.

Mr. Dorsey: They are attempting to use this device to establish a market price. I think that is their main purpose.

Mr. Jamieson: Jumping over to North Africa, we don’t think there has been any bilateral agreement—there hasn’t been anything announced in Algeria. Libya has agreed to supply Malta with 12,000 barrels a day. It has agreed to increase Italy’s oil supply by 140,000 barrels a day for the remainder of 1974. The price of oil was only reported to be at “market levels.” They are planning to sell Hungary 33,000 barrels a day after the trans-Yugoslav pipeline is completed, which would be in 1976 or 1977. They are supplying Argentina 100,000 barrels a day for the remainder of 1974 in barter for grains and meat. They have agreed to supply Rumania 60,000 barrels a day from 1974 to 1978 in return for which Rumania is to build a 300,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Libya. They have signed a cooperation agreement with Poland which will give Poland crude starting in 1980 in return for tankers and other industrial equipment.

Secretary Kissinger: The practical effect of all these barter deals is that the purchasing country can avoid the result of the high prices by overcharging for its own products, and those who pay cash are the ones who get stuck.

Mr. Jamieson: That is right.

Secretary Kissinger: And in turn they cannot avoid the high price, because it is set by the barter deal.

Mr. Jamieson: Yes. And the producers say this is a market price.

Mr. Rush: If the barter deal is the market price, then the cash sales would determine the market price—these follow the market price, don’t they?

Mr. Jamieson: No. They establish a price for the crude oil. Say they sell it at posted price—

Mr. Rush: But it fluctuates.

Mr. Jamieson: Posting is fixed.

Mr. Donaldson: Has this in fact happened? Have they pointed to these deals and used this? We hear about all these deals. We hear they are being used as a reference point. In fact, are they—

Mr. Jamieson: They keep telling us—the Saudis, as an example, keep telling us that they are moving their crude at 93 percent of posted. That would be their pricing in the barter deals. Therefore they are saying this is the market price.

Secretary Kissinger: Then what are we doing at this coordinating group, Bill? I mean what are we trying to prevent when we say we are trying to prevent bilateral deals, when all these governments say they agree? What exactly are we doing?

Mr. Donaldson: My next question was how many of these deals were made fairly early on in the game. Are any of these ones you are referring to recent deals that are actually done? A lot of them appear to be phantom deals that have not actually been done—except for the early ones. And the early ones were done in very small amounts.

Mr. Jamieson: All these deals, like the Argentinian deal for grain and so on, that is a firm deal. That is recent.

Mr. Tavoulareas: The Libyans made a deal about two weeks ago in France and tried to come to Germany, and Germany refused to make the deal.

When we have to buy back great quantities of oil, as buy-back oil, under the new participation agreement, they use 93 percent of posted price as the basis of it. We haven’t settled. That is what they demanded.

Mr. Clements: You see, Henry—

Mr. Simon: You are talking about $11 oil.

Mr. Tavoulareas: We have not settled. We said we would not settle on that basis.

Mr. Dorsey: I think the one thing that is not being done is not barter deals, but auction deals, where countries and private companies went in and bought oil for cash on an auction basis and paid extremely high prices.

Mr. Simon: A lot of that wasn’t picked up.

Mr. Jamieson: I have a little paper on that, if you would like to jump to that subject.

Does that cover the bilateral deals?

Secretary Kissinger: I am trying to understand—

Mr. Clements: Henry, as a matter of explanation, you should realize that the companies in the last several years have moved to participation by the host country. And what they are talking about is host country oil. They are entitled, in the case of Aramco, I think, Ken—is it 50 percent?

Mr. Jamieson: No—still 25.

Mr. Clements: Twenty-five—all right. So Saudi Arabia has a call on 25 percent of all the oil that Aramco produces. They are taking that oil that for a while they depended upon Aramco to market for them. So for any practical purpose, it was under Aramco’s control. That is what Ken was talking about a while ago. They have now taken that oil and said “We want to use that oil to make these bilateral deals” that he is talking about.

Now, the thing that is wrong with those deals, long-term, is that they are long-term. You start talking about that refinery, 500,000 barrel-a-day refinery, and so forth—that is way off into the future at some time. And the Saudis or anybody else over there making these deals are going to see that they are in fact letting their oil go on a current basis, as produced, and they are buying pie in the sky at some future date. And this represents a real fuzzy area, believe me. There will be a deterioration in this relationship before they get all this buttoned up, in my opinion.

Mr. Jamieson: Of course, the basic question we ask is how good is the contract.

Mr. Clements: Exactly. That is what I am talking about.

Mr. Jamieson: Based on our past experience, the contract is not very good.

Mr. Clements: Exactly. The performance is miserable on that other side.

Mr. Sisco: How much of this 25 percent would ordinarily come to the United States, Ken?

Mr. Jamieson: Not a great volume. I guess pre-embargo it was probably 800,000 barrels a day of Saudi crude.

Secretary Kissinger: But is it worth exerting ourselves to prevent these deals?

Mr. Tavoulareas: I think to discourage them is a very good thing.

Mr. Jamieson: Yes. That is one of the things you were trying to do in the February 11 meeting, wasn’t it?⁸

Secretary Kissinger: Yes. That is exactly what we were trying to do.

But my question is, is it worth the effort.

Mr. Tavoulareas: If you were successful, it would be.

Mr. Clements: I think the Secretary is really asking to what degree should this effort be made? Should it be a strenuous effort, should it be a discouraging effort in the sense that you are using the term? How strong should he go in really trying to do this? That is what he is asking you. Isn’t that right, Henry?

Mr. Tavoulareas: Just discourage it. I don’t think you can really stop them.

Mr. Jamieson: I think it is difficult to stop. We all know what the French are doing. They just say they are going on this course in spite of anybody.

Mr. Hess: It is going to be a further drain on the dollar. Posted prices are unilaterally set by the producing country. And on these bilateral deals, they keep raising their posted price, and everyone at this table is just going to have to pay more money for the portion they get.

Secretary Kissinger: How long can the French afford that sort of deal? Is their industrial base big enough to handle that?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, of course as long as they can make these deals for goods, make these barter deals, from their standpoint, I assume it is attractive.

Mr. Tavoulareas: I think more important is how long can the world live with the high prices. We don’t think very long.

Secretary Kissinger: That we agree with. But are you also saying that these bilateral deals are keeping the prices up?

Mr. Tavoulareas: They have a tendency towards keeping the prices up.

Mr. Jamieson: That is the danger. They tend to put a floor under prices.

Mr. Tavoulareas: It is not only 25 percent. Saudi Arabia now is demanding 60. So much of the oil that is going to be acquired is part of that 60 percent.

Secretary Kissinger: So you buy 100 percent of your oil at these high prices?

Mr. Jamieson: No.

Mr. Tavoulareas: If we finally go 60–40—Ken should answer that.

Mr. Jamieson: If we finally make a 60–40 deal in Saudi Arabia, we would be getting 40 percent of the oil on a so-called cost basis. That is producing cost plus taxes and royalties. We would be getting 40 percent. The 60 percent we would be buying back presumably, if you can believe what they are saying—we would be buying back a portion of that 60 percent at posted price.

Mr. Simon: About $9.50, then.

Secretary Kissinger: And they are selling the rest—

Mr. Jamieson: They would be selling the rest at this same price.

Secretary Kissinger: The rest they just acquire from you. I mean they get your oil—

Mr. Jamieson: You see—

Secretary Kissinger: They get that at cost.

Mr. Jamieson: That is right—60 percent at cost.

Mr. Tavoulareas: Sell some to us and some to these [at this point in the document, a page is missing from the original] barter deals.

Secretary Kissinger: They sell it to you for cash.

Mr. Jamieson: Sell it to us for cash.

Mr. Rush: The cost is virtually nothing, isn’t it?

Mr. Jamieson: The lifting cost.

Mr. Rush: Ten cents a barrel.

Mr. Jamieson: To them the cost is ten cents. So if they can sell it for $11—

Secretary Kissinger: So you get 40 percent for, say, $7.00.

Mr. Jamieson: $7.12 is the number it is today.

Secretary Kissinger: Then you get a portion of the 60 percent at posted, 93 percent of posted prices, and they get the rest, which they then—

Mr. Jamieson: That is right.

Secretary Kissinger: What could we really do about it?

Mr. Jamieson: I think the area where perhaps pressure could be brought, or attempted to be brought, would be in this whole pricing area.

Secretary Kissinger: How?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, that is a difficult problem. Our judgment is the one who has really been pushing prices the worst is the Shah.

Mr. Clements: I agree.

Mr. Jamieson: He is the one pushing hard.

Secretary Kissinger: He is also the hardest one to push. He is a tough cookie.

Mr. Jamieson: I know.

Secretary Kissinger: Simon is our specialist on treating with the Shah.

Mr. Simon: He is a tough cookie.

Mr. Jamieson: I have had a little experience with him myself. But that is really now I think our judgment, that the price problem is more critical than the supply problem.

Secretary Kissinger: Yes. But with these barter deals—it is very tough to get it down.

Mr. Jamieson: That is correct.

Mr. Tavoulareas: If the posted price went down, the barter deal price would go down. So would the price at which they sell. That would work.

Secretary Kissinger: How do we get the price down?

Mr. Tavoulareas: Someone has to talk to the Shah.

Mr. Donaldson: What is your inter-transfer price?

Mr. Jamieson: Our inter-company transfer price?

Secretary Kissinger: I plan to see the Shah the next time I go out there.

Mr. Tavoulareas: I think that is a very good idea, Mr. Secretary. From the reports we get, he finds himself not visited as much as other people.

Secretary Kissinger: I am in very frequent contact with him.

Mr. Jamieson: Of course you know you will get the speech, if you mention price to him that “When you stabilize prices in the western world, then we will stabilize crude prices.”

Mr. Tavoulareas: But he can’t think that a four-time increase in price in four months is justifiable.

Mr. Jamieson: He quotes soy beans.

Mr. Simon: Not to mention the dynamics of a particular commodity. You cannot compare soy beans and oil and meat and everything else.

Mr. Jamieson: He will use whatever he needs for comparison.

Secretary Kissinger: If we engage in bilateral deals with the Shah, will that have any effect on the situation in areas not directly related to oil?

Mr. Jamieson: You mean would that improve our situation?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes.

Mr. Jamieson: Actually, in Iran as such the present deal gives the consortium substantial volumes of oil, much better than we think we are going to get in Saudi Arabia.

Secretary Kissinger: How about the Saudis? If we went into substantial bilateral relations with them—commercial, military and other bases—would that help you?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, I think it would.

Secretary Kissinger: How?

Mr. Jamieson: Well, I think it would improve the whole U.S. image in Saudi Arabia.

Secretary Kissinger: But it wouldn’t affect you directly.

Mr. Clements: Yes, it would, Henry.

Secretary Kissinger: How?

Mr. Clements: It will do several things. The most important is it will sop up this available resource that they have over there, either in money or manpower or time to handle the arrangements and the deals. They can only take on so many of these things. And you, in your negotiations with Faisal, never see below him the lack of depth in the bureaucracy. They just don’t have any.

Secretary Kissinger: That has become clear to me.

Mr. Clements: So what Ken is talking about—if we started in some serious move, like through technology, industry, this sort of thing, just sop up whatever was available over there in that regard, it would help.

Mr. Jamieson: There is none available now, Bill. It is all sopped up for all practical purposes.

Mr. Clements: They are going to try, I guarantee. The Japanese and these others are going to try. They are going to make a strenuous effort.

Mr. Jamieson: What is happening over there now is that you have got every other—most of the nations of the world are doing their best to push in and in a sense displace the Americans in Saudi Arabia particularly. And I must say that all the attacks that the industry is suffering here in the United States is not doing us a bit of good in trying to hold our position foreign-wise. Because a lot of the companies I am sure are saying to themselves “The industry is under such attack here in the United States, why should we rely on an international oil company for our supply when we may be carved up at home.”

Mr. Clements: I agree.

Mr. Rush: Unfortunately we cannot control that.

Mr. Jamieson: I know.

Secretary Kissinger: It would also reduce the scope of the barter deals, wouldn’t it, if we managed to get in with industrial development schemes to the degree that we could—they will have less of a need to get it from elsewhere.

Mr. Clements: That is right.

Mr. Jamieson: That is correct. Of course you have got to watch this thing a little bit, because the bulk of that Saudi oil, of course, as we all know, is not coming to the United States. And one thing that all the other countries in the world are concerned about is the United States trying to pre-empt that—what they consider their traditional source of supply. So you have to strike a balance on that approach, too.

Secretary Kissinger: What would they do if they got concerned?

Mr. Jamieson: I don’t know.

Mr. Dorsey: There are two distinct things in bartering. There is commodity bartering, as the French are bartering on munitions and armament, and the other is bartering plants, which I don’t consider bartering—it is making an investment in the country. And that cannot be stopped, because I think it is the basic objective of these countries to industrialize their countries. And they are going to use oil as a mechanism to get European and Asian countries particularly to come in and build plants there, aluminum plants, petrochemical plants. So that objective, I think, is a legitimate objective.

Secretary Kissinger: But then should we care when the Europeans have bilateral deals and talks with the Arabs?

Mr. Dorsey: I think in this sense—that those kinds of deals, in the long run—leaving the price consideration aside—would tend to build some stability into that situation. I would view them as being more good than bad. I think the American companies are being discriminated against to some extent here; that they really are, for political reasons, looking for the Asians and Europeans rather than to us.

Mr. Rush: Who will finance and own these plants that are involved in the barter deals?

Mr. Jamieson: I think they take all forms. Most of them will have some form of government financing behind them.

Mr. Rush: It sucks up some of this money that comes in.

Mr. Clements: Government participation.

Mr. Jamieson: Let’s take the Japanese going in there with a plant—who would be financing that. I think it will be a joint venture, in Saudi Arabia, with the Saudis putting up their share of the money, and some Japanese consortium, perhaps, with backing from the Japanese Government.

Secretary Kissinger: What I am not clear in my mind about is this. If it doesn’t hurt us, then we should let them go ahead. If it does hurt us, we ought to try to fight it. And if we fight it, we have to know how to do that.

Mr. Jamieson: I think the price mechanism is probably perhaps the only way—the only area perhaps where we can say we are truly being hurt, because it does tend to put this floor under prices. Anything that can be done to lower prices, that would be most helpful. I think it would perhaps discourage some of these barter deals. The Saudis so far are indicating that they are interested in a price reduction, as evidenced by the fact they restored this production level to a higher level than existed before the embargo. So if you can get the supply coming out, then the old law of supply and demand may take hold, and we may start to see some lowering of prices.

Mr. Simon: Are you encouraged by the fact they won’t negotiate with you in Saudi Arabia now in your participation or not?

Mr. Jamieson: It is kind of a paradoxical thing, Bill. On the one hand they are lifting the production levels up, as I just mentioned. But as you say, at the same time they are refusing to sit down with us and negotiate on buy-back prices.

Mr. Simon: One might read into that they intend to reduce prices.

Mr. Jamieson: You could place that interpretation on it.

Secretary Kissinger: That they want to reduce prices?

Mr. Jamieson: Yes.

Mr. Rush: Ken, basically, the people making the barter deals are the ones hurt most by the higher prices. We do not import much of this oil ourselves. The oil goes to Europe and Japan.

Mr. Jamieson: Those high prices are translated into Venezuela, Canada, other places.

Mr. Rush: We are hurt, but we are not hurt relatively as much as they. They have to import most of their energy.

Mr. Jamieson: We are not hurt to the same degree. But the 30 percent we import, whether it is coming from Saudi Arabia isn’t the point, because the price spreads right across the world.

Mr. Rush: They are the ones hurting themselves most of all by doing it.

Mr. Jamieson: Right.

Secretary Kissinger: That isn’t clear to me from this exposition. As long as they can pay with their own products and then get—

Mr. Jamieson: It is still a relatively small amount of the oil that they are importing.

Mr. Rush: Maybe two or three percent. And the rest of it they pay the high price for.

Mr. Tavoulareas: Ken, isn’t it right that Saudi Arabia, besides restoring production to slightly higher than September 1973, has also asked the question “How much more will we have to increase production to bring prices down.” I don’t see how they are going to do it. That is a very encouraging question as far as we are concerned. It looks like they are trying to get the price down.

Mr. Simon: Yes.

Mr. Jamieson: If they do it unilaterally, it could be very damaging to OPEC as such.

Secretary Kissinger: Would we care?

Mr. Jamieson: No, we would not. We would be all in favor of it.

Mr. Clements: Faisal has dead aim on the Shah in this deal, Henry—I guarantee you.

Mr. Simon: They don’t have to reduce the posted price—just raise the production and let the market take care of it.

Mr. Jamieson: They can do that—raise production.

Secretary Kissinger: Do we care?

Mr. Jamieson: The hard thing to forecast—

Mr. Dorsey: Our price is geared to their posted—

Mr. Tavoulareas: You asked before, Bill, why do you think Yamani is not negotiating. It is the theory of Saudi Arabia right now that the King is unhappy enough with the price negotiations last December and not quite certain himself how the Secretary’s effort is going to come out, that he has pulled back authority from Yamani for a short period of time and he is watching it very closely himself.

Mr. Jamieson: I don’t think you can isolate any of these things from the political aspect, I am sure. We have the feeling, as Tav has outlined here, that one of the reasons our negotiations are not proceeding in Saudi Arabia is that they are kind of waiting to see whether this momentum is going to be maintained in these Middle East negotiations.

Mr. Anderson: The Shah saw the $18 a barrel oil. All of a sudden it has evaporated. He is very unhappy about it. He thinks $18 should be the price. And of course that is ridiculous. He already had the money spent in his mind.

Mr. Jamieson: Would you like—

Mr. Dorsey: Ken, could I make a point here. I think there is a misunderstanding. If Saudi Arabia simply lets the production go up, then the presumption is that an over-supply of oil would drive down the price. It might. It might drive down the price of their oil. But it would be extremely damaging to the foreign oil companies who pay taxes and royalties based on the posting, and the posting would not be reduced. And our buy-back oil which we receive from them is based on posting. So if the price of the oil went down, the price of our oil would be artificially maintained at a very high level.

Mr. Simon: Implicit in my comments were if the world price began to come down through over-production, the renegotiation would have to immediately commence on the tax and royalties.

Mr. Tavoulareas: I would go to the next meeting and say “You have to bring the price down. Look at the over-supply.”

Mr. Simon: Exactly.

Mr. Jamieson: Bill, as we know from bitter experience, it is awfully hard to predict how they are going to go.

Mr. Simon: I wasn’t predicting.

Mr. Jamieson: If I can skim through the crude auction results now.

Abu Dhabi put 250,000 barrels a day up for auction and they felt the prices were tendered too low and did not accept any of the bids. The prices were reported to have ranged from $9.50 a barrel to $11.50. They have now requested several companies to rebid at 93 percent of the posted price, which would be $11.75 a barrel.

Iran auctioned 475,000 barrels a day for six months, starting January 1, 1974. The price was reported to be as high as $17 a barrel. Liftings from Kharg Island for the first quarter have averaged less than 300,000 barrels a day. They have requested the UK to accelerate their liftings of bilateral crude. Both these bits of information indicate Iran’s customers are not lifting all of their auctioned crude.

Kuwait offered 460,000 barrels a day of crude for auction in February, but cancelled the auction because the prices of $8.50 a barrel to $10 were too low. They are reported to have subsequently sold a total of 100,000 barrels a day to Filoil, which is a Philippine Company, Petrobras, which is the Brazilian company, and an undisclosed U.S. company.

Libya auctioned 740,000 barrels a day at prices reported to vary from $16.00 to $20.00, with deliveries to start January 1, 1974. Reports indicate that the customers are lifting less than 300,000 barrels a day of this crude, at an undisclosed price.

Libya is also reported to have offered crude to Petrobras at $14.00.

Nigeria offered 300,000 barrels a day at an auction in December 1973 with delivery to start January 1, 1974. The crude was in 50,000 barrel-a-day lots for three months, renewable for three-month periods contingent upon accepting quarterly price adjustments. Price was reported to be $22.60 per barrel for the 150,000 barrels sold. Mitsubishi has since cancelled their 50,000 barrel-a-day without lifting and outside of two cargos to Ghana at $12.50 no crude is known to have been lifted.

So this indicates a clear buyer resistance to these very high prices.

Secretary Kissinger: If I understand you, gentlemen, you basically don’t care whether we expand our bilateral deals with the producing countries or not.

Mr. Rush: Non-oil deals.

Secretary Kissinger: I am talking about non-oil deals.

Mr. Jamieson: I don’t know whether I would put it quite that way, Mr. Secretary. I think anything done to strengthen the U.S. position in these countries is all to the good. And if bilateral deals will accomplish that, I certainly would be in favor of them.

Mr. Tavoulareas: I think the more inter-dependent the two countries become, the better chance you have of getting to be more reasonable on price.

Secretary Kissinger: The more dependent?

Mr. Tavoulareas: The more inter-dependent we become, the United States and Iran, the United States and Saudi Arabia, the better chance you have of getting them to be more reasonable on price.

Mr. Rush: These countries have said they are going to industrialize. Obviously that will involve a lot of people from the countries helping out going in there. I would think this of necessity would draw us closer to them.

Secretary Kissinger: It has no immediate economic impact.

Mr. Rush: That is right.

Secretary Kissinger: I can see the advantage in influence.

Mr. Jamieson: Taking Saudi Arabia as an example, they have had a very strong American presence there for all these years. I think right now they have an interest in getting Europeans and Japanese in there, in a sense diversifying.

Secretary Kissinger: Why?

Mr. Jamieson: I think it just gets more string to their bow.

Mr. Clements: Gives them diversification.

Mr. Rush: That is the reverse of what I was trying to say. They think they would be less dependent on us if they have other countries in there.

Mr. Jamieson: That is right. But I think they are also enjoying very much the role they are playing. They have a quota system. They say “We will deliver to Japan x thousand barrels a day of oil.” And they are using this as a strong political tool, as I am sure you know, or hope to use it.

Mr. Anderson: Are you talking of some preferential arrangements for the U.S. out of Saudi Arabia—which is what they proposed about a year-and-a-half ago. Would that sit well with the world community? I think that would be—

Secretary Kissinger: The world community is doing a lot of things that don’t sit all that well with us. I don’t spend sleepless nights on that problem.

Mr. Tavoulareas: If the world community would cooperate, that is one situation. If they won’t, I think we would look at it differently. Wouldn’t you say that is right?

Secretary Kissinger: What do you mean?

Mr. Tavoulareas: I said if the initiative you took on February 11 would follow on through and everyone would have a united position, that is what we all would hope for.

Secretary Kissinger: But if they do not?

Mr. Tavoulareas: They will look out for themselves and I guess we better look out for ourselves.

Secretary Kissinger: I am saying we should not be the first ones to look out for the world community if no one else does.

What do you think, Jack?

Mr. McCloy: Well, as Ken says, I am very much concerned about this price thing. All these barter deals have a tendency to do two things—they keep the market in a very chaotic condition, nobody knows just what the situation is—and I think you have to have stability in this situation, if you are going to come out of it. You have to have some ability to plan ahead in order to supply the world with what it needs.

Secretary Kissinger: If you can’t have a free market, aren’t you better off having a maximum of interdependence, so that you have at least some leverage?

Mr. McCloy: Yes, I think that is right.

Secretary Kissinger: I mean that is the problem. Ideally we would like to achieve what we set out to do at the energy conference. On the other hand, if we cannot get that, and if every country in the world makes its own bilateral deals, should we then be the last ones to stand for multilateralism?

Mr. Rush: I would think you would be in this position. You have marketing companies in much of Europe and in Japan. You have the oil in Saudi Arabia, let’s say. Now, the stronger our political position, the more non-oil deals we have, the less you are apt to be squeezed in terms of nationalization and take-over by the European countries where your companies are and by the Saudis working together.

Mr. Jamieson: I am a little confused as to what you contemplate—that this would be a government-to-government deal, to build a plant in Saudi Arabia?

Mr. Anderson: It could be cash.

Mr. Rush: No—the government cannot supply know-how. Private industry would have to do it.

Mr. Clements: It would be in my view the encouragement through the State Department of this strong transfer of technology and industry into Saudi Arabia at their invitation, where there would be participation on their side. That is really what we are talking about. It has to be. Because there isn’t anything else that will work.

Mr. Anderson: In exchange for which we get a preferential position.

Mr. McCloy: In other words, pick up the Yamani offer.

Secretary Kissinger: But you wouldn’t have to make that explicit. I mean that would be self-evident, wouldn’t it?

Mr. Clements: Yes, sure.

Mr. Rush: The umbrella agreement could be government-to-government. The carrying out of the agreement should be by private industry.

Mr. Dorsey: Isn’t the most we would ask for would be our government should support us in our position that we should not be discriminated against, which I suspect we are being at the moment.

Secretary Kissinger: How?

Mr. Dorsey: I think they are preferential to the Japanese, Asians and Europeans, to make their initial deals with, because if they make these deals, they are going to be making deals with the same oil companies they have been doing business with all the time. As Ken says, they want some independence from that.

Mr. Jamieson: The thing works two ways. We have all seen what they did and the pressure they used through their oil to get people to change their posture vis-à-vis Israel in the last few months. And with, say, the Japanese tied into them, or the UK or other people, it works the other way, too—gives them more of a club.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, I appreciate this meeting very much. You have given me a good insight into what is going on. We will continue our political efforts. We may try to get a foot in the door in a few of these other countries, just so we have something to talk about besides abstract exhortations.

Mr. Jamieson: One other area, Mr. Secretary—and I don’t know whether anything can be done about it. We are in a position now where contractual relationships mean nothing. We consummate a contract with them, and it lasts maybe thirty days, in some cases—in Saudi Arabia, as an example, in our 25 percent participation deal, we never did get it signed up before it flew apart. So our whole trading throughout the world—this is not only confined to oil—is getting most unstable.

Mr. Anderson: There is no assurance.

Mr. McCloy: Have you given up, Henry, on the idea of your combined effort here, because of the moves that the Europeans made? Do you think there is any picking up—

Secretary Kissinger: My personal opinion is that we won’t get any cooperation [until] we get some clout of our own. And if we exhort, we are just going to leave the field open to them. And that until we get something that we then agree to coordinate with them, they won’t listen. And that until that happens, they are going to use this coordinating group to milk us for technology, but they won’t give us any cooperation on price, on anything that has any risks to them.

That is my impression of what is going on now.

I think the British are going to start an industrial development program in Saudi Arabia soon. And to say it isn’t oil—that is for yokels. They are not doing it in Gambia.

Mr. Jamieson: That’s right.

Secretary Kissinger: You don’t have to have oil written into these agreements.

So the problem we will soon face, Jack, realistically—Bill keeps going to these meetings. They are going great, as long as we are giving away technology and oil sharing. Take the consumer-producer meeting. There is only one issue as far as I see it—are the consumers going to have a united position. Anybody can organize a consumer-producer meeting. You don’t need a government for that. But if the consumers don’t have a common position—

Mr. Jamieson: I was looking at the anti-trust man over there.

Secretary Kissinger: If the consumers don’t have a common position, they are just going to play out in front of the united producers all the dilemmas that got us into this fix to begin with. Therefore, if we cannot get a common and agreed agenda, and a common position, all that Bill Donaldson is doing is a unilateral sharing of American technology and some sharing of supplies with other countries.

If we can get a common position, if they are willing to cooperate with us in getting prices down, then that is by far our preferred course, without any question.

I don’t have the impression that we are anywhere near this.

When I was in Britain yesterday, we talked about it⁹—and actually international affairs have reached a point where a Labor Government is more pro-American than a Conservative one. They are even eager to cooperate. And I made more or less the point you made, that we ought to cooperate in getting prices down. They say, “Oh, the Arabs won’t like that.” It’s a funny world if the producers can organize but the consumers cannot.

So this is the problem we are going to be facing.

Bill is going to the next meeting, which is April 3 or 4, and we are going to find out whether we can in fact get joint action.¹⁰ If we cannot get joint action, strangely enough we will then go to a consumer-producer meeting fast, because the earlier we go, the better we can exploit our still strong position in the Arab world. We will go there fast, see what happens, see who has the muscle. If they are willing to cooperate, we will put off the consumer-producer meeting until we can develop joint positions.

This is roughly speaking the strategy.

The worst thing for us is to have a consumer-producer meeting taking place at a moment when we are stalemated in the Middle East.

So it is in our interest to get the damned thing over with while we are not stalemated in the Middle East, if we are not going to have an agreed consumer position.

Now, if we cannot get an agreed consumer position at this next energy meeting, then I think we are going to float for a while and see what we can tie up, and then see whether that will get them to cooperate, to coordinate these bilateral efforts. We can still use this enterprise that Bill is chairing for us to then coordinate these various bilateral deals, so that at least we can bring pressure on the price that way.

Those are the only courses we think we have open to us.

The worst is to go along for six months and talk about cooperation while our bilateral options are being foreclosed and our political clout gets dissipated.

Right now in Saudi Arabia we still have some unique assets. No one else can give them the intelligence, no one else can give them the political support they need, no one else can give them the military support they need. These are three assets we have that no one else can give them. The French can talk about what they want. But when Iraq and South Yemen start cooperating, we have got to be there.

Now, that is what we have to capitalize on. We would prefer the approach of the February 11 conference. But we have got to get a real consumer cooperation. If we cannot get a real consumer cooperation, it is not worth it.

Mr. Jamieson: Where is this next meeting?

Secretary Kissinger: Brussels.

Mr. Jamieson: With the same participants?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes. And they are all for cooperation as long as we give our technology. They are great on that. We can get unanimous votes on that all the time.

Well, unfortunately I must leave now.

Mr. Jamieson: Mr. Secretary, I would like to say how grateful we are for everything you have done to date on this problem.

Secretary Kissinger: I appreciate that.

Mr. Anderson: There is one paradox here you should be aware of. As a practical matter, oil cannot move from the wellhead in the Persian Gulf to the consumers all over the world without using the existing facilities of essentially the American oil companies. There is no practical way it can be done outside of that framework.

Secretary Kissinger: You would not play chicken with them—you would not refuse to move it.

Mr. Anderson: I am not one of them. That is a real paradox.

Secretary Kissinger: But would you refuse to move it? You could not risk that.

Mr. McCloy: I saw Burns just left here. Has he the solution to this recycling problem that Emminger says you don’t have to worry about the monetary situation any more?

Secretary Kissinger: I don’t know.

Mr. McCloy: Sorry he got away.

Secretary Kissinger: Well, I appreciate your coming down. In a couple of months maybe we can get together again.

Mr. Jamieson: We certainly appreciate your time, especially at the tail end of the week you have been through.

Secretary Kissinger: The week wasn’t as rough as the newspapers have presented it. The newspapers say it was a terrible failure. None of us knew this until we had left.

Mr. Anderson: You had to get home to find out.

Mr. McCloy: Are you going to take a vacation now?

Secretary Kissinger: Yes. I am leaving tomorrow.

(Whereupon at 6:35 p.m. the meeting was adjourned.)

1. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Transcripts of Secretary of State Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, 1973–1977, Box 3, Secretary’s Staff Meetings, March 1974. Secret.
2. President Boumedienne made a private visit to Washington on April 11 while attending the UN General Assembly session in New York.
3. See Document 243.
4. See Document 332.
5. Transmitted in telegram 39 from Baghdad, January 23. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files)
6. Possibly a reference to the paper Jobert gave to Kissinger during the Washington Energy Conference. See Document 324.
7. Not found.
8. The Washington Energy Conference.
9. Not further identified.
10. A report on the Energy Coordinating Group meeting, held in Brussels April 3–4, is in telegram 70073 to EC capitals and other posts, April 6. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files)