Talk:OPEC

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OPEC was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: June 7, 2006

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To-do list for OPEC:

edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do: Requests: Explain how countries adhere to OPEC's quotas: Do all member-states have (at least partially) nationalized oil industries? How do those that don't regulate their output? Verify: Chavez comments could use a source. Expand: 1. Discuss Saudi displeasure with the Iranian impact on oil prices in 1979 - break in solidarity. 2. Make clear the stance of OPEC and member states after 9/11 & invasion of Iraq. 3. What role does occupied Iraq play in OPEC, if any? 4. When and where does OPEC meet? Is it always in Vienna? Is there a better term to use in the LEAD than 'oil ministers'? Update: Permanent: Verify & update production numbers, quotas, etc throughout article

An event in this article is a January 7 selected anniversary

Contents 1 Bias 2 error 3 Old opening comments 4 Consumers 5 Inconsistency 6 Trinidad & Tobago 7 Article name 8 Member/nonmember list inconsistancy 9 History Section 10 yemen 11 Headquarters 11.1 Operations 12 GA failed 13 Graph of Oil Trading Nations 14 Requested move 14.1 Survey 15 Question... 16 VANDALISM! 17 "raise the price"? 18 Introduction 19 added angola 20 Iraq - Dollars and euro cents 21 Green OPEC (PANPP) 22 Organization 23 Flag

[edit] Bias

Shouldn't there be a sizable part of the OPEC page dedicated to controversies surrounding the group (such as acting like a monopoly? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.20.207.69 (talk) 22:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

i agree —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.134.64.123 (talk) 18:04, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] error

it says that gabon quit in 1995 but the OPEC website says that it quit in 1994.

[edit] Old opening comments

[1] If OPEC has an official language, it would warrant mention. However, I was only able to find the one source (see above), and it didn't really look very convincing. Does OPEC carry out all of their meetings, etc in English, despite having 6 of the 11 members as Arabic speaking countries?

• Seven out of 11 members are Arabic-speaking countries, actually, but nonetheless OPEC's official language is English. See the OPEC Statute, Article 6: [2] --Metropolitan90 08:28, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I re-worded this to eliminate the mention of arabic. I don't mean to bee to liberal, but honestly it's just as relevant that Venezuelans speak Spanish or that Iranians speak Farsi(or even Azeri or some other language) as opposed to english usage.--Ccosta 01:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm putting mention of it back in. It is certainly of note that the official language of the vast majority of member states is not the language that they use in their meetings. MrZaius^talk 13:18, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

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Removed generally regarded as a cartel and just called it a cartel. I don't know of anyone who thinks OPEC isn't a cartel.

Also removed statement about Saudi price of oil. The breakeven price of Saudi oil is very, very low.

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It is now well known that the International Crude Oil prices depend largely on the USA's stand on Iraq. Every time the US plans to attack Iraq, the oil prices increase.

No. Venezula is a much higher impact on the current oil prices.

In fact, if I am not wrong, this has been happening in almost every year since the Gulf War. Given the situation, I seriously doubt if the US is trying to manipulate International Oil prices through its War on Iraq.

But, interestingly, there is yet another side to the story. Though the USA has large oil reserves, it has to import crude oil to meet its domestic demand. Now, this is puzzling, for any country which has to import a commodity, would not normally like to see the prices of the commodity rise.

The reason is that U.S. oil costs $10/barrel to produce while Saudi oil costs $2/barrel. It's just more efficient for the United States to import Saudi oil.

But, if US oil companies have some kind of an arrangement with major oil producing countries in the Gulf (For example an oil field taken on lease for a long period of time), through which they are able to get oil at prices that existed before the Gulf War began (or at least at prices below international parity), then things could be quite different.

The cost of producing oil at a well is determined by geology.

These companies would then surely find soaring oil prices to their liking, as they can then make huge profits. Also, oil has been greatly increased and is known as a freaking expensive thingumy...fuck

Oil company profits are remarkably independent of the price of oil. Suppose oil prices rise, oil companies increase the price to the consumer. Suppose oil prices fall, oil companies decrease the price to the consumer. The net result is that oil companies make more or less the same about of money regardless of the price of oil.

That makes no sense. Higher price - constant production cost = bigger profits. - Tbannist

What oil companies *hate* is unpredictability. Oil companies can live with high prices. They can live with low prices. What oil companies *hate* is not knowing what the price of oil is going to be, because this means that they can't make long term investments.

All this could be with the help of politicians in the US and elsewhere, who do this even after knowing that it could be against their country's interests.

In fact, besides these companies, oil-producing countries in the Gulf such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and even Iraq may be benefiting from the so-called dethroning of Saddam Hussein, as they have been getting better prices for their oil. However, the common man in every country including the US has been shelling out higher prices for oil and other commodities as well—indirectly contributed by the increase in oil prices, for no fault of his.

All the ideas expressed in this article are solely based on my assumptions. Nevertheless, I believe in what I have written, and call for a serious debate on the topic.

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" is a rare example of a successful cartel" What does this mean exactly?

Most cartels do not last for long due to the incentive for members to covertly increase their production and thereby increase revenues and profits(called chiseling). mydogategodshat 01:02, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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This articles has a permanent link from http://opec.com --Imran 23:51, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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Some one explain this sentence

However gold had experienced similar price increases in the intermediate years since the gold standard was ended in 1971 without the existence of any gold cartel. Many maintain that it was US inflation that allowed such pricing power to global commodity producers.

Roadrunner 00:13, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I can give you an explanation, but do not interpret the explanation as support for the statement. There is an ongoing controversy between monetarist economists and Keynesian economists of the relative importance of the real economy (ie., the supply and demand for goods and services) and the monetary economy (ie., the supply and demand for money). Monetarists claim that the monetary economy drives most economic processes. To them, a constricted supply of crude oil (a real variable) will have little effect in the long run. They see the long run increase in oil prices, not as a result of OPEC's output restrictions, but as a result of monetary policy which since the early 1970s has abandoned the discipline of the gold standard, which allowed the growth of M1, which has lead to inflation, which increases the price of commodities. mydogategodshat 01:02, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Added founding date and members from http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272961&day=10272979&cat=10272940 - Tbannist

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What's the link with Ehrlich-Simon bet ??--Chealer 11:36, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

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[edit] Consumers

Is there any petroleum consumer countries organization ??.

Yes, it is known as TRW -- The Rest of the World.

[edit] Inconsistency

The author says that Iraq switching to the Euro for oil imports may have caused the Gulf War. The Euro did not enter circulation until 2002, the Gulf War was in 1990. Perhaps he/she meant the Second Gulf war?

No he/she didn't. The author only maintains that economics would be damaged in the US if other countries had followed Iraq's decision. The author did not mention that it caused the Gulf War, the second OR first.

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This statement's conclusion is not supported by consensus amongst economic scholars. It appears to be ill-informed at best, but is most likely an error based on the author's bias.

[edit] Trinidad & Tobago

Shouldn't contries like the one above that produce oil be included in the non-members?

[edit] Article name

Why isn't doesn't this article appear under the full name of the organization? This would make it consistent with the Wikipedia naming convnetion and with other international organizations, which are all spelled out? Kevintoronto

Convention: Avoid the use of acronyms in page naming unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronym and is widely known and used in that form (NATO, laser, radar, and scuba are good examples of acronyms that are commonly thought of as words).

Maybe in Toronto it's different, but here (US) everyone says OPEC, I imagine it's more recognizable than the whole name--69.232.37.139 01:42, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Member/nonmember list inconsistancy

The list of members includes former members, marked as such -- wouldn't it make more sense to put them in the list of nonmembers, marked as such? It'd also make the count above the list accurate.

The text: "Thanks to OPEC, member nations receive considerably more for the oil they export."

This is no longer the case because OPEC has a policy of maintaining the price of oil at $27 per barrel it is now at over $60 per barrel and all member states are producing oil at the fastest rate they can which means that thay have nothing to thnk OPEC for.

I have a question about this particular section. How is membership decided in OPEC. I mean it doesn't say anywhere how a country becomes a member of OPEC. Thank you, October 25, 2006

Mr October 25, 2006, I believe current members vote on allowing new members in. Also, members have to pay a membership fee and meet quotas.

Also, I second the first line. Ecuador is listed but it isn't a part of OPEC for a long time now according to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC#_ref-6 --Zybez (talk) 15:23, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History Section

The history section of this article seems to wander quite far off topic without really addressing the history of the organization. Some oh so helpful person seems to have even removed what little information there was about its founding. I will try to fix this by going through the edit history (although I know very little about OPEC). And by the way, please sign your edits, people!Halidecyphon 06:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I echo this. The History section doesn't even mention when/where/why OPEC was founded. That might be important. —the preceding unsigned comment is by 69.162.26.132 (talk • contribs)

Absolutely. I was going to start a thread about this here. It would appear that Halidecyphon's efforts were unsuccessful, since nothing seems to have changed since his September 2005 post. However, we do have a history of OPEC on the website, but it's at the 1973 oil crisis article. This needs to be amended. Regards, Redux 19:11, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I have now made alterations in the article to correct this: the "History" section was renamed to "Operations", since it wasn't really about the organization's history. I then created a new "History" section, using the information from another article of ours: 1973 oil crisis. The data was copied and pasted from there, so that we'd have it here as well. Regards, Redux 18:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] yemen

should yemen really be listed as a non-member oil producer? they have very little oil. Arre 07:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

why not, it produced 410,000 bbls of oil/day in march 2006, syria produced an equal amount, eygpt at 690,000 bbls/day and oman at 770,000 bbls/day. I would hardly say that it wasn't an insignifiacnt amount. also exploration in Yemen is picking up in recent years. These firgures where from April's edition of "World Oil" Philbentley 21:43, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Headquarters

Why is the seat of OPEC in Vienna? Austria seems like an odd choice: non - producing, home to no major oil company, it has no history of international influence (like that of France, the UK or others)? Also, Geneva used to be the seat of OPEC, but it moved after 5 years to Vienna. Again, an unusual choice of sorts, don't you think?

not really. The reasons you give were probably the main reasons WHY it is in vienna (and not in a member-state). Austria is neutral, both politically and concerning the oil-business, has no influence on any of the member-states, has no direct interest in the oil business (besides using some of the oil). I think being politically neutral was the main reason though. This qualifies Austria as much as Switzerland. I don't know why the changed the seat from Geneva to Vienna --Wirthi 21:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Operations

the last paragraph of the operation section is not very clear, it credits Hugo Chavez with getting the OPEC Countries in 1998 to scale back production. Chavez only became president in Dec of 1998. So they way it reads at the moment isn't very clear.

Have jsut been goggling around and can see what the orginal auther was trying to say. What happened was After 98 when Chavez took over he cut Venezuela's production down to the OPEC quota which previously it had been over producing. Will get round to clearing this section up a in a bit, wasa very good article in the Motely Fool website covering this. Philbentley 21:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I removed this statement...

Thanks to OPEC, member nations receive considerably more for the oil they export. "Last year, OPEC's 11 members . . . received $338 billion in revenue from oil exports, a 42% increase from 2003, according to figures compiled by the federal Energy Information Administration (New York Times, Jan. 28, 2005). Compare these figures to those from 1972, when oil exporters received $23 billion from oil exports, or 1977, when, in the aftermath of the 1973 energy crisis, they received $140 billion (Daniel Yergin, The Prize [Simon & Schuster, 1991], p. 634).

This reads too much like a sales pitch. Yes revenues have grown considerably. As has the price of Gasoline and the revenues of Venezuela and friends. This is not "Thanks to OPEC." Correlation is not causation, cum hoc ergot propter hoc. --Ccosta 01:20, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA failed

For these reasons:

• Too many lists. - The only remaining list is the list of member states, integral to the article. MrZaius^talk 14:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• Not enough references.
• Questions unanswered (if they can't just say so in the talk page beside each questions)

  Are there controversies/scandals raised over this organization? - Yes, and they are dealt with in the article. Most controversial thing they've done is use the oil weapon and, well, exist. Government cartels regulating oil production and price are an anethma to the mechanisms of the free market. MrZaius^talk 14:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

  How do countries adhere to OPEC?

  Why are there former members? How were they removed from the list? What happened? - clarified in article. MrZaius^talk 14:38, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

  What about their meetings? Where are they held, when are they held?

Lincher 17:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

--Removed list of non members, moved list of secretaries general to a seperate page. The list of member states is short enough that it should remain in the article. The list of non-members was not necessary, and was incomplete. I added mention of every OPEC member to the List of oil-producing states, to make it easier to flip through the list and read from it much the same information that you could have gotten from the incomplete list of non-members. MrZaius^talk 17:51, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Couple more things to clear up before resubmitting - See also needs cleaned up & Further Reading cleanup. Make clear the OPEC stance, response, and actions taken after 9/11 & the 2003 Iraq invasion. Make at least some note on the role of an occupied Iraq in OPEC, if any. MrZaius^talk 15:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC) Broke everything out from this section into the Todo template

[edit] Graph of Oil Trading Nations

This graph contains errors, such as showing Indonesia as exporting as much as it produces (whereas in fact it is now a slight net importer).

It is also inconsistent in that it doesn't show nations selected on any particular criterion. Why show India and the USA, but not China or Japan among the importers? It can't be a list of the major oil traders because it includes some nations (such as the UK and Indonesia) that now have close parity between imports and exports. It can't be a list of major producers, because it omits some of the major producers such as Azerbaijan.

I don't know how to edit the picture in any simple way. I think it should be removed until the problems are fixed.

Ordinary Person 03:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion seems to have moved to image's talk page. Image talk:Chart-of-Oil-Trading-Nation.gif MrZaius^talk 15:54, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

[edit] Question...

OPEC is indeed almost always described as a cartel, and maybe it is one or maybe it isn't, but is there perhaps a more NPOV word to use here? Consortium comes to mind. (Does OPEC or any of its friends ever describe OPEC as a "cartel"? That seems most unlikely...) Just bringing this up for discussion, would like to hear thoughts on it. kthx, Paul 03:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a valid point. Indeed, OPEC seems to dispute the 'cartel' attribute. I think the solution is to call it an international organization, and to mention that generally it is considered a cartel. For what it's worth, as the article mentions, OPEC is seen as a stereotypical cartel and is even used as such in textbooks. -- IlyaHaykinson 13:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Paul 17:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] VANDALISM!

There has been a user who has inserted picture that overlaps almost the entire introduction area, but is transparent. It allows no access to any of the hyperlinks in the intro section, and when someone clicks on it, they get directed to a page with the title "Penis". Vandalism or not? I think so.24.242.232.15 02:42, 4 January 2007 (UTC)anonymous user

[edit] "raise the price"?

How can a cartel "raise the price" of crude oil? I'm pretty sure that all they can do directly is cut production. Thus, this article (and the On this day bit) should say something like "On January 7, 1975, OPEC cut oil production, causing a 10% price increase". Right? --Spangineer^ws (háblame) 01:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I've changed it now; my understanding was that as well. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 02:13, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree: a seller sets the price. I understand its not as if they change the price tags on each barrel but production decisions are made specificly to set/controll the price. The insight and analysis is precise to the point that this is what they are effectively doing. That is the whole point of the organization.

[edit] Introduction

Can anyone provide a reputable reference for a comparison of North Sea and Gulf oil reserves compared to that of the OPEC nations? I believe calling these oil fields "large" in the intro when referring to OPEC price control is false. Does the production from these fields really diminish their control? If no one can convince me of this I am going to remove this language from the intro. Vessels42 19:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Give it 72 hours. I was thinking of Yergin's The Prize when I wrote that. But yes, given that the North Sea alone produces some 6 million gallons a day, and given the time that the field was discovered and brought on line, one can easily argue that it and other fields discovered and brought on line during the 70s and the rise of an essentially capitalist Russia greatly diminishes the control that OPEC can wield over world markets. MrZaius^talk 02:37, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] added angola

angola has been a member of OPEC since 2007, i noticed it was pinpointed on the minimap but not in the opening introduction to the article, so i added it —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.20.220.60 (talk) 02:25, 14 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Iraq - Dollars and euro cents

I've seen numerous references to Carol Hoyos and Kevin Morrison, "Iraq returns to the international oil market," Financial Times, June 5, 2003 to back up the claim that Iraq moved back from euros to dollars after the 2003 invasion, but I can't locate a copy of the article anywhere. Anyone got a copy or access to one through their library that can confirm or refute the validity of that citation, and allow us to use it here or strike the statement? Shockingly difficult to find post-invasion sources on the subject. MrZaius^talk 16:20, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind - Probably just speculation, given the early date of the piece. Still can't find a copy, but also can't find anything else of the sort on my own library's news search engine. Struck the unsourced statement. MrZaius^talk 16:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Green OPEC (PANPP)

Please include the AU-plan into the article which foresees the construction of a "green OPEC" (called the PANPP). More information on this site and this site. Note in the article that the move has been set-up despite the many problems with biofuels (see Biofuels article).

Thanks. KVDP (talk) 12:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

There is little on the actual organization and way too much focus on the organization's international influence. How often does it meet? What does it actually enforce and how? What is the benefit to joining and the effect of leaving? Who is the president? How is the president chosen? - Keith D. Tyler ¶ 00:43, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flag

Could someone add the easy-to-find OPEC flag to this page--208.102.210.163 (talk) 00:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)