Editing OPEC (section)

===1959–1960: Anger from exporting countries===
In February 1959, as new supplies were becoming available, the multinational oil companies (MOCs) unilaterally reduced their posted prices for Venezuelan and Middle Eastern crude oil by 10 percent. Weeks later, the [[Arab League]]'s first [[Arab Petroleum Congress]] convened in Cairo, Egypt, where the influential journalist [[Wanda Jablonski]] introduced Saudi Arabia's [[Abdullah Tariki]] to Venezuela's observer [[Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo]], representing the two then-largest oil-producing nations outside the United States and the Soviet Union. Both oil ministers were angered by the price cuts, and the two led their fellow delegates to establish the Maadi Pact or [[Gentlemen's agreement|Gentlemen's Agreement]], calling for an "Oil Consultation Commission" of exporting countries, to which MOCs should present price-change plans. Jablonski reported a marked hostility toward the West and a growing outcry against "[[absentee landlord]]ism" of the MOCs, which at the time controlled all oil operations within the exporting countries and wielded enormous political influence. In August 1960, ignoring the warnings, and with the US favoring Canadian and Mexican oil for strategic reasons, the MOCs again unilaterally announced significant cuts in their posted prices for Middle Eastern crude oil.<ref name="open"/><ref name="prize">{{cite book |first=Daniel |last=Yergin |author-link=Daniel Yergin |title=The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1991 |isbn=978-0-671-50248-5 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/prize00dani/page/499 499–503] |title-link=The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Painter |first=David S. |year=2012 |title=Oil and the American Century |journal=[[The Journal of American History]] |volume=99 |issue=1 |pages=24–39 |doi=10.1093/jahist/jas073 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bBvz_YxlB-AC&pg=PA7 |title=Historical Dictionary of the Petroleum Industry |first=M.S. |last=Vassiliou |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8108-6288-3 |page=7}}</ref>