from Mr Lipps' book Gold Wars...

The Role of Oil Wealth and OPEC

   
At the beginning of the 1970s, wage and price inflation soared, leading to lofty energy prices and vice versa. The Arabs were very slow to understand dollar debasement, the currency in which their
bills were paid. For a long time they did not understand they had been cheated for years. The paper money they received for their black gold had dwindled in value. In 1973 and 1979, they massively increased their prices to compensate for the increment in the American Consumer Price Index. The sudden quasi quadrupling of the oil price turned many energy producers into megamillionaires in a very short time. In 1973, one barrel of oil bought one bushel of U.S. wheat. In 1980, the same barrel of oil bought nine bushels of U.S. wheat. By the middle of the 1970s, the demand for gold by investors from oil producing countries exploded.

Not only individual investors were buying gold, but OPEC nations were also in the market. Timothy Green commented: 

.[the] single most important development in the gold market since 1970 has been gold buying by

central banks (or other government institutions) in oil producing nations: Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Qatar and Oman have all acquired gold..



comment: maybe many of us are slow to understand dollar debasement