Nick Fountain

The Seven Sisters.

So the Seven Sisters were the huge companies that were extracting oil from the oil states.

And as the name implies, the Seven Sisters were awfully close.

They were separate businesses, but they coordinated how they dealt with the oil states.

They divvied up who got to drill and where.

They even decided the price they would pay countries for their oil.

And that is why OPEC was hatched, essentially as a response to this kind of a cartel.

Because the countries whose oil was being pumped were like, why don't we have more control over the price of our oil?

This is where the secret meeting comes in.

To set the stage, picture, if you will, Cairo 1959, the Hilton, which is this gleaming hotel covered in turquoise tiles.

And at that hotel are guests of what was called the Arab Petroleum Congress.

Basically a who's who of international oil executives and a bunch of oil ministers.

Was it mostly men?

This is Anna Rubino, who's a biographer.

Wanda died in 1992.

Luckily for us, Anna, who worked for Wanda, ended up writing the book on her.

And that's why we have this story.

I'm delighted that you're interested in Wanda.

Wanda was, among other things, an investigative journalist, a power broker, the publisher of a newsletter called Petroleum Intelligence Weekly.

And when we say newsletter, we're not talking about one of those newfangled substacks.