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Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
Official site for the intergovernmental organization dedicated to the stability and prosperity of the petroleum market.
www.opec.org

OPEC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.opec.org ... Indonesia's membership from OPEC was voluntarily suspended recently as it became ... Several members of OPEC alarmed the world and ...
en.wikipedia.org

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The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).The principal aim of the organization, according to its Statute, is the determination of the best means for safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively; devising ways and means of ensuring the stabilization of prices in international oil industry with a view to eliminating harmful and unnecessary fluctuations; giving due regard at all times to the interests of the producing nations and to the necessity of securing a steady income to the producing countries; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, and a fair return on their capital to those investing in the petroleum industry."Chapter I, Article 2 of The Statute of the organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (as amended)

OPEC's influence on the market has been called into question. Several members of OPEC alarmed the world and triggered high inflation across both the developing and developed world when they used oil embargoes in the 1973 oil crisis. OPEC's ability to control the price of oil has diminished somewhat since then, due to the subsequent discovery and development of large oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, the opening up of Russia, and market modernization. OPEC nations still account for two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, and, in 2005, 41.7% of the world's oil production, affording them considerable control over the global market. The next largest group of producers, members of the OECD and the Post-Soviet states produced only 23.8% and 14.8%, respectively, of the world's total oil production.BP plc. "British Petroleum table of world oil production". Retrieved June 18, 2007. As early as 2003, concerns that OPEC members had little excess pumping capacity sparked speculation that their influence on crude oil prices would begin to slip.http://english.aljazeera.net/English/archive/archive?ArchiveId=6664http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_03/b3816074.htm

Membership ]

The Organization now has twelve member states. They are listed below with their affiliation dates. Note that although the official language of a 7-nation majority of OPEC member-states is Arabic, OPEC's official language is English language. Only one member nation (Nigeria) has English as an official language. Economy of Africa:

(January 1, 2007)
(December 1962)
(July 1971)
(1969)

Middle East:

(September 1960)
(September 1960) (Excluded from OPEC production quotas since 1998)
(September, 1960)
(December 1961)
(September 1960)
(November 1967)

South America#Economy:

(September 1960)

Southeast Asia#Economy:

(December 1962; membership under review as Indonesia is no longer considered a net oil exporter by OPEC)

Former Members:

(full member from 1975 to 1995)
(full member from 1963 to 1993), expressed interest in rejoining (November 2006)

Prospective Members:

, , and have been invited by OPEC to join.http://www.kommersant.com/p726525/
and are currently seeking membership.http://www.kommersant.com/p726525/

History Venezuela was the first country to move towards the establishment of OPEC by approaching Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1949, suggesting that they exchange views and explore avenues for regular and closer communications between them. In September 1960, the governments of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela met in Baghdad to discuss the reduction in price of crude oil produced by their respective countries. As a result, OPEC was founded to unify and coordinate members' petroleum policies. Original OPEC members include Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Between 1960 and 1975, the organization expanded to include Qatar (1961), Indonesia (1962), Libya (1962), the United Arab Emirates (1967), Algeria (1969), and Nigeria (1971). Ecuador and Gabon were members of OPEC, but Ecuador withdrew on December 31st, 1992http://www.econlib.org/library/enc/OPEC.html because they were unwilling or unable to pay a $2 million membership fee and felt that they needed to produce more oil than they were allowed to under the OPEC quota. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE4DF1F3AF93BA2575AC0A964958260 Similar concerns prompted Gabon to follow suit in January 1995 .Angola joined on the first day of 2007. http://www.fin24.co.za/articles/companies/display_article.aspx?Nav=ns&lvl2=comp&ArticleID=1518-1783_2045086) Indonesia is reconsidering its membership having become a net importer and being unable to meet its production quota. The United States was a member during its formal occupation of Iraq via the Coalition Provisional Authority.{{cite web|url=http://www.slate.com/id/2170040/nav/tap3/|title=Go NOPEC! Congress takes on the biggest, baddest cartel of all|first=Timothy|last=Noah|date=2007-07-10|publisher=Slate|accessdate=2007-07-11--> Indicating that OPEC is not averse to further expansion, Mohammed Barkindo, OPEC's Secretary General, recently asked Sudan to join. Angola, Sudan to ask for OPEC membership Houston Chronicle Iraq remains a member of OPEC, though Iraqi production has not been a part of any OPEC quota agreements since March 1998.

The oil weapon The persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict finally triggered a response that transformed OPEC from a mere cartel into a formidable political force. After the Six Day War of 1967, the Arab members of OPEC formed a separate, overlapping group, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, for the purpose of centering policy and exerting pressure on the West over its support of Israel. Egypt and Syria, though not major oil-exporting countries, joined the latter grouping to help articulate its objectives. Later, the Yom Kippur War of 1973 galvanized Arab opinion. Furious at the emergency re-supply effort that had enabled Israel to withstand Egyptian and Syrian forces, the Arab world imposed the 1973 oil crisis against the United States and Western Europe. In the 1970s, the great Western oil conglomerates suddenly faced a unified block of producers.

This Arab-Israeli conflict triggered a crisis already in the making. The West could not continue to increase its energy use 5% annually, pay low oil prices, yet sell inflation-priced goods to the petroleum producers in the Third World. This was stressed by the Shah of Iran, whose nation was the world's second-largest exporter of oil, and the closest ally of the United States in the Middle East at the time. "Of course world price of oil is going to rise," the Shah told the New York Times in 1973. "Certainly! And how...; You nations increased the price of wheat you sell us by 300%, and the same for sugar and cement...; You buy our crude oil and sell it back to us, refined as petrochemicals, at a hundred times the price you've paid to us...; It's only fair that, from now on, you should pay more for oil. Let's say 10 times more."Quoted in Walter LaFeber, Russia, America, and the Cold War (New York, 2002), p. 292.

The threat and use of embargo as a weapon, however, triggered a decline in OPEC's power. Western nations developed closer ties to the Soviet Union and rapidly built up their offshore drilling in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, greatly lessening the potential impact of future price shocks induced by OPEC. The effect was not immediate, however. When the Shah of Iran fell in 1979, another oil crisis (1979 oil crisis) ensued.

Responding to war and low prices Leading up to the 1990-91 Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein advocated that OPEC push world oil prices up, thereby helping Iraq, and other member states, service debts. But the division of OPEC countries occasioned by the Iraq-Iran War and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait marked a low point in the cohesion of OPEC. Once supply disruption fears that accompanied these conflicts dissipated, oil prices began to slide dramatically.

After oil prices slumped at around $10 a barrel in the late 1990s, concerted diplomacy, sometimes attributed to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez, achieved a coordinated scaling back of oil production beginning in 1998. In 2000, Chávez hosted the first summit of heads of state of OPEC in 25 years. The next year, however, the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States and the subsequent invasions War in Afghanistan (2001–present) and 2003 invasion of Iraq and Occupation of Iraq prompted a surge in oil prices to levels far higher than those targeted by OPEC during the preceding period.

Economics Since currently worldwide oil sales are denominated in U.S. dollars, changes in the value of the dollar against other world currencies affect OPEC's decisions on how much oil to produce. For example, when the dollar falls relative to the other currencies, OPEC-member states receive smaller revenues in other currencies for their oil, causing substantial cuts in their purchasing power. After the introduction of the euro, pre-invasion Iraq decided it wanted to be paid for its oil in euros instead of US dollars causing OPEC to consider changing its oil exchange currency to euros. Iraq: Baghdad Moves To Euro Member states Iranhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CLA20060210&articleId=1937 and Venezuelahttp://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aGBuWpZJ9cPI have undergone similar shifts from the dollar to the euro.

OPEC decisions have had considerable influence on international oil prices. For example, in the 1973 oil crisis OPEC refused to ship oil to western countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War or October War, which they fought against Egypt and Syria. This refusal caused a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on October 17, 1973, and ending on March 18, 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on January 7, 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%. At that time, OPEC nations — including many who had recently nationalized their oil industries — joined the call for a new international economic order to be initiated by coalitions of primary producers. Concluding the First OPEC Summit in Algiers they called for stable and just commodity prices, an international food and agriculture program, technology transfer from North to South, and the democratization of the economic system.

Current quotas {| class="wikitable"|+ OPEC Quotas and Production in thousands of barrels per day Quotas as reported by the United States Department of Energy!Country!!Quota (7/1/05)!!Production (1/07)!!Capacity|-!Algeria ||894 ||1,360||1,430|-!Angola ||N/A ||1,490||1,490|-!Indonesia||1,451||860 ||860|-!Iran ||4,110||3,700||3,750|-!Iraq || ||1,481|||-!Kuwait ||2,247||2,500||2,600|-!Libya ||1,500||1,650||1,700|-!Nigeria ||2,306||2,250||2,250|-!Qatar ||726 ||810 ||850|-!Saudi Arabia||10,099||8,800||10,500|-!United Arab Emirates||2,444||2,500||2,600|-!Venezuela||3,223||2,340||2,450|-!Total||28,000||31,981||32,230|}

See also

List of Secretaries General of OPEC
Chart of exports and production of oil by nation
List of oil-producing states
Energy crisis
1973 energy crisis
1979 energy crisis
Ehrlich-Simon bet
Hubbert peak
International Energy Agency: a rival body founded during the 1973 crisis by the OECD
Petrol
Power outage
Renewable energy
Manucher Mirza Farman Farmaian
Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Petrocurrency
Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC)
Price fixing
Petrodollar Warfare

Petroleum industry writers/commentators

Articles from the Secretary Generals of OPEC

Find Articles from Dr. Rilwanu Lukman (1999-200), Dr. Alí Rodríguez-Araque (Jan 2001 – 30 Jun 2002), and Adnan Shihab-Eldin (Kuwait), (acting for Al Sabah): (1 Jan 2005 – present)

Books covering aspects of the subject

The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (1993), by Daniel Yergin
The Politics of Oil-Producer Cooperation (2001)
The Coming Oil Crisis (2004)
Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (2004)
It's The Crude Dude (2004)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2005), by John Perkins

Notes

External links

OPEC official site
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/opec.html
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics: OPEC
OPEC Timeline by Nicolas Sarkis, from Le Monde diplomatique, May 2006

OPEC
OPEC News and analysis on Oil, Energy, Fuel ,Petrol, Gas ,Petroleum, Power and more. Searchable news in 44 languages from WorldNews Network and Archive

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
Anyone wishing to forge a link with OPEC should do so via clearly established and widely publicized official channels by directly contacting the OPEC Secretariat at its ...

A brief history of OPEC
X : WARNING – Fraudulent Use of the Official Logo and/or Name of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries - OPEC:

OPEC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a group of twelve states [1] [2] made up of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya ...

BBC NEWS | Business | Opec: The oil cartel in profile
BBC News takes a closer look at the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. ... The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) is an association of oil-producing ...

Oil Spill Containment, Spill Kits - opec.co.uk
Water Pollution Solutions for emergency oil spill response and general industry. Using specialist oil pollution clean-up equipment.

OPEC
OPEC News and analysis on Oil, Energy, Fuel ,Petrol, Gas ,Petroleum, Power and more. Searchable news in 44 languages from WorldNews Network and Archive

BBC NEWS | Business | Chavez warning opens Opec summit
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tells a key Opec summit oil prices could double if the US attacks Iran.

OPEC Abu Dhabi - Home
Monday, 3rd December 2007. OPEC Secretariat Dinner . read more. Tuesday, 4th December 2007. Visit to the UAE President. read more . Wednesday, 5th December 2007

OPEC Abu Dhabi Program
Program of Events : Date: Time: Topic: Attendance: Location: Monday, 3rd December 2007 . 1000 hrs . Abu Dhabi Familiarization Tour for Journalists . Press . Emirates Palace, Foyer