Fuad Rouhani, 96; Lawyer, OPEC’s First Secretary-General

Fuad Rouhani, 96, the first secretary-general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, died Jan. 30 in a London nursing home of causes associated with aging.

An international lawyer born in Tehran and educated in Paris and London, Rouhani was elected to the post when OPEC, formed in 1959, established its headquarters in Geneva in 1961.

At the time, oil prices were being forced down by a global oversupply of crude oil. Multinational oil companies reduced the producing countries’ share of the decreasing revenue, and the countries protested, threatening to clamp down on production agreements.

But Rouhani, a moderate mediator, helped the countries collectively negotiate mutually beneficial changes with the oil companies.

Although OPEC’s success has been sharply debated, Rouhani has been universally credited with halting the early 1960s drop in oil prices and preventing radical Arab leaders from controlling the organization. He had a strong background in the oil industry, having worked in his native country for Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., which became British Petroleum, or BP.

Rouhani was an oil industry advisor to Mohammed Mossadegh, who led the nationalization of the Iranian oil concern in 1951, and later to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. After Rouhani’s house was confiscated in the 1979 Iranian revolution, he moved to Geneva and then to London.