Robert Mabro

Mabro was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in December 1934, the son of Greek Orthodox parents who had migrated from Tripoli, Lebanon in the 1860s. He graduated with a BSc in Engineering from Alexandria University in 1956, In 1960 he joined a Jesuit seminary near Paris and spent the next four years studying philosophy; he then went to London to study economics as a post-graduate student at the School of Oriental & African Studies. He took his MSc in 1966, and then became a researcher in economics at SOAS, where he met Judy, whom he married in 1967. ==Career==

In 1971, Mabro was made a Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. He was elected a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford in 2006. He died on Crete, Greece, on 2 August 2016. ==1997 oil production cut==

In the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, oil prices plunged sharply to below $10 a barrel, which had significant negative effects on the economies of crude oil producers around the world. However, a history of distrust and a desire to protect their own market share was preventing any cooperation to counter the price fall amongst the nations affected. In early 1998, following a meeting in Oxford with Adrian Lajous, the head of Mexico's state-owned oil company Pemex, Mabro held a series of meetings and phone calls in which he acted as an intermediary between officials from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and their Mexican rivals. This initiative led to joint production cuts in late 1998 and early 1999, the effect of which was that by mid-2000 the price of crude oil had recovered to more than $30 a barrel. Lajous later recalled, "Robert Mabro played a key, if unaccredited, role in the secret negotiations that brought together these three countries." Mabro himself later suggested that OPEC should change its logo to a tea-bag “because it only works in hot water.” ==Publications==

• The Egyptian Economy, 1952-72 (1974) • The Industrialization of Egypt, 1939-73: Policy and Performance (co-author, 1976) • World Energy Issues and Politics (1980) • The Market for North Sea Crude Oil (co-author, 1986) • Oil Markets and Prices: The Brent Market and the Formation of World Oil Prices (co-author, 1993) • Energy Taxation and Economic Growth (co-author, 1994) • The Oil Price Crisis of 1998 (1998) • Gas to Europe: The Strategies of Four Major Suppliers (co-author, 1999) • Oil in the Twenty-First Century: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities (2006) • Oil Markets and Prices: The Brent Market and the Formation of World Oil Prices (co-author) ==References==