James E. Akins, Envoy to Saudi Arabia, Dies at 83

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This New York Times obituary will be published in tomorrow's paper, even though Akins died on the 15th.

James E. Akins, the State Department’s top energy expert and then ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who warned more than a year in advance of the 1973 Arab oil embargo that oil-exporting nations were poised to restrict shipments, died on July 15 in Mitchellville, Md. He was 83.

His death, at an assisted-living center, was caused by a heart attack, his family said. He had earlier lived in Washington.

Mr. Akins made his prediction after attending a meeting of Arab petroleum producers in May 1972 in Algiers, where he confirmed that oil-exporting nations were eager to take advantage of the United States’ increasing dependence on the crude they pumped. The countries, he said, could not spend as much money as they were getting for their oil, and realized that “oil in the ground is as good as oil in the bank.”

He soon laid out the grim economics of the energy future in an influential article in the journal Foreign Affairs in April 1973. He correctly predicted that world consumption of oil for the next 12 years would exceed that of all previous human history, and warned that the loss of any two Middle Eastern countries’ production would push oil prices from $3 a barrel to more than $5. In fact, they reached $39.50.

The first shock came with the Middle East war that October. After Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria, the United States pledged to resupply its military. Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries responded by raising the price of crude by 70 percent, agreed to production cutbacks to enforce the new price and banned exports to the United States and selected other nations. The embargo ended in March 1974, after delivering a body blow to the global economy and forcing Americans to endure gasoline rationing and long lines at service stations.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/world/middleeast/25akins.html?partner=rss&emc=rss