1973 oil crisis

The Kuwait meeting

Meeting in Kuwait on 17 October 1973, the Arab oil-exporting countries announced an immediate 5 percent production cut, followed by further monthly cuts of at least 5 percent until Israel withdrew from occupied territories and Palestinian rights were restored.

The declaration promised continued deliveries to friendly countries and threatened a total embargo only against countries that used their armed forces to aid Israel. Kuwait's oil and finance minister, Abdul Rahman al-Atiqi, explained that the cumulative reductions were meant eventually to produce a complete cutoff to the United States.

A separate decision about price

The price move came from a different meeting and a different set of countries. At an OPEC summit at the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait City on 16 October, six Persian Gulf members raised the posted oil price by 70 percent, from $3.01 to $5.12 per barrel; some accounts date that announcement to the 17th, alongside the production cut.

OPEC and OAPEC are not interchangeable. The coordinated political supply action came from the Arab exporters; the posted-price rise came from Gulf OPEC members.

The US embargo came later

The US-specific embargo escalated after Nixon's 19 October request for $2.2 billion in emergency aid to Israel — a request that followed the production-cut decision rather than causing it. Federal Reserve History dates that embargo to 19 October.

So 17 October did not produce one simultaneous, identical embargo against Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The price shock combined production cuts, targeted embargoes and separate producer pricing decisions: by January 1974 oil stood at $11.65 a barrel, against $2.90 before the embargo.