OPEC success and prospects
This essay addresses itself mainly to a question asking, ''What is happening to us.'' It focuses on the rise, slow at first, then meteoric, of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as a redoubtable force on the world scene. In recounting the successes of OPEC and assessing its prospects, the authors have inclined to the simple hypothesis (still unfamiliar to many American observers) that the leaders of the oil-producing countries, like other actors on the international political scene, act from motives of enlightened national self-interest, and that they have exploited rather skillfully a favorable conjunction of circumstances, with their collection of $100 billion a year. The authors have concluded that there is indeed a logical pattern in OPEC's strategy and tactics--a plan that was set down as early as 1968 in OPEC's Declaratory Statement of Principles, and that has been implemented step by step as opportunity offered. It is concluded that OPEC has greater strength and hence better prospects than many observers, especially from the United States, have credited it with. It follows that many of the confident statements, heard so frequently in 1974, that OPEC like any other cartel would soon break up, or that the question was not whether the price of oil would come down but when, were based more on wishful thinking than on careful analysis of the international economic and political factors. Needless to say, such overconfidence on the part of OPEC's critics can only serve further to strengthen its own position. The focus has mainly been on OPEC itself, on the question of cohesion among its member states, and on the external circumstances that determine its past and future success. (MCW)
- OSTI ID:
- 7328607
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: A Council on Foreign Relations book
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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