Born in Baghdad during the Ottoman Empire, he received a doctorate in petroleum engineering and worked in the Rumalia oil fields as a young man.
The Libyan agreement also included a 10 per cent barrel premium in respect of low sulphur, Pachachi said "the Oil companies have a long tradition of resisting any adjustment in posted prices to reflect this advantage."
And, we in OPEC are always ready to cooperate with other developing countries, and/or commodity price stabilisation organisations, and to put our experience at their disposal.
Pachachi reacted to this move by Nixon stating that it was "unfair, illogical and quite simply intolerable that the oil producing countries should have to bear the final cost of US national policies, such as the Vietnam War and aid to Israel, of which we strongly disapprove.
On September 19, 1973, less than a month before the Yom Kippur War, Pachachi stated in a BBC interview that "oil is a political weapon against the US" and that Arab oil producing countries were convinced that their use of the product as a political weapon would in the end force the United States to change its policy towards Israel and the Middle East conflict.
In my opinion this moral responsibility on the part of the Arab oil-producing countries should cease to exist, if the United States continues with its pro-Israeli policy and the rest of the world community remains silent, or at best adopts resolutions merely condemning Israel's actions while Israel continually defies and ignores such resolutions."