OPEC Countries

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CURRENT GK( UPSC - MAINS, GD/PI)
OPEC – FACT FILE
Q. What does the abbreviation OPEC stand for?
Ans - OPEC stands for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries.
Q. Name the countries which form this organization?
Ans - OPEC is a cartel of 12 countries made up of
1. Algeria 7. Kuwait
2. Angola 8. Libya
3. Ecuador 9. Nigeria
4. Iran 10.Qatar
5. Iraq 11.Saudi Arabia
6. Venezuela 12.The U.A.E.
Note- 1. Indonesia's membership from OPEC was voluntarily
suspended in May 2008. Indonesia reconsidered its membership
having become a net importer and being unable to meet its
production quota.
2. The United States was a member during its formal occupation
of Iraq via the Coalition Provisional Authority.
3. Angola joined OPEC on the first day of 2007.
Q. Where are the Head Quarters of OPEC located and who is
the Secretary General of OPEC?
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Ans- The organization has maintained its headquarters in Vienna
since 1965.The Secretary General is Abdalla Salem el-Badri.
Q.What are the objectives of this organization?
Ans: The principal objectives of OPEC are:
1. Determination of the best means for safeguarding the
interests of Organization's member nations by securing a
steady income to the producing countries. OPEC was founded
to unify and coordinate members' petroleum policies.
2. Ensuring an efficient, economic and regular supply of
petroleum to the consuming nations, and a fair return on their
capital to those investing in the petroleum industry.
3. It also pursues ways and means of ensuring the stabilization
of prices in international oil markets with a view to eliminating
harmful and unnecessary fluctuations.
Q. What is the share of OPEC in world’s total oil production?
Ans- OPEC nations account for two-thirds of the world's oil
reserves, and, as of March 2008, 35.6% of the world's oil
production, affording them considerable control over the global
market.
Q. What was 1973 oil crisis?
Ans- The persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict finally triggered a
response that transformed OPEC 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 centring 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. Furious at the
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emergency re-supply effort that had enabled Israel to withstand
Egyptian and Syrian forces, the Arab world imposed the 1973
oil embargo against the United States and Western Europe.
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 one of the closest allies
of the United States in the Middle East at the time. The Shah told
the New York Times in 1973. "Certainly! And how...; You [Western
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."
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.