Falih Denies Repetition of 1973-Style Oil Embargo

Saudi Arabia has no intention of unleashing a 1973-style oil embargo on western consumers and will isolate oil from politics, the Saudi energy minister said Monday amid a worsening crisis over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“There is no intention,” Khalid al-Falih told Russia’s TASS news agency when asked if there could be a repetition of the 1973-style oil embargo.
Top US lawmakers turned their ire on Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday and said they believed he ordered the killing of Khashoggi, although the Trump administration maintained a more cautious stance.
Several US lawmakers have suggested imposing sanctions on the oil kingdom in recent days while the world’s largest oil exporter, has pledged to retaliate to any sanctions with “bigger measures”.
“This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country, for decades we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics,” Falih said.
“My role as the energy minister is to implement my government’s constructive and responsible role and stabilizing the world’s energy markets accordingly, contributing to global economic development,” Falih said.
The 1973 oil crisis  began on October 17, 1973 when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), consisting of Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria, announced as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War—a war fought from October 6 to 25, 1973, by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel—that they would no longer ship petroleum to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt. This included the US and its allies in western Europe.
About the same time, OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil in order to quadruple world oil prices.