366. Summary of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Summary of the President’s Meeting on Oil Supply Agreement with Israel
PARTICIPANTS
- President Jimmy Carter
- Acting Secretary of State Warren Christopher
- Secretary of Energy Charles Duncan
- Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
- Ambassador Henry Owen
- Richard Cooper, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs
- Robert Hunter, NSC Staff Member (notetaker)
The President indicated that we should develop a reasonable approach on implementing the oil agreement with Israel that would be definitive enough to meet Israel’s needs, but that would not become a price-subsidy device. If Israel were being gouged on price, or couldn’t get oil, then it should be able to get oil through us, at cost price. But the triggering mechanism should not become an incentive to activate in [Page 1231] terms of price. If Israel could get oil elsewhere, it should do so. He had no objection to a triggering device that cited either the top 10% or top 20% of the average cost of U.S. imports. (There was a general consensus at the meeting on 10%). He wished to avoid triggering now, and does not want to sell Alaskan oil to Israel. It was agreed that we should come up with a standard for automatic triggering of the agreement, in order to give the Israelis a sense of certainty, and to indicate that we stand by the oil agreement.
Further recommendations on the formula would be made to the President later in the day.2
- Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Staff Material, Office, Presidential Advisory Board, Box 85, Sensitive XX: 5/1–13/80. Secret; Sensitive. The meeting took place in the Oval Office. The summary was found attached to a May 1 covering memorandum from Hunter to Brzezinski, upon which Brzezinski wrote: “Keep it in the NSC.”↩
- See footnote 2, Document 378.↩