Oral History Interview with William Tucker, September 25, 1985 Page: 97

                                
97

year. At that point in time, Caltex in a short period--I
don't think we ever did this for a year--had exceeded two
millions barrels a day through our own system. We're now
selling less than a million barrels a day, I would say.
But we were up over two million barrels a day at that point,
and it looked as though we weren't going to be able to
meet Japan's requirements for the forthcoming year. This
was a terrible shock to them because up until that time
the one thing we never had to worry about any time we
entered a venture--a market, a refinery, whatever -was
that there was always plenty of crude oil. We always sort
of rested assured that the crude oil would be there and could
be developed in time. It took us longer to do whatever we
had to do than it took them, Aramco, to supply the crude
oil. So there was always a more or less unlimited supply
of crude oil, it seemed.
By 1973 we were, indeed, in a real short supply situa-
tion, so what happened, as in any short supply situation,
the price of products began to go up. The price of crude
oil really followed the product prices up. All these OPEC
increases that were negotiated were always after the fact

and following the product market up. Everyone blamed OPEC,
and they said that OPEC is a cartel and they're controlling
pipices.  They weren't controlling. There was a genuine
shortage. The price was- going up because it was a short