Word: market
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cartel members are jabbing up prices because the panicky rush for supplies by oil companies on the small but highly volatile "spot market" shows that they can get away with it. Normally most petroleum is bought by oil companies under long-term contracts with OPEC suppliers, but 3% to 5% changes hands for whatever price a seller can get. In times of scarcity, demand surges-and so do prices...
...their own oil through profiteering middlemen. Last week the Saudi oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, complained of just that tactic, and the sentiment was echoed in Caracas by Venezuelan officials. OPEC might be wise to stay silent because much of the oil that is churning through the spot market is coming not from the companies but directly from the producing states...
OPEC would also suffer. The oil producers are paid in dollars for their exports, and since 1973 they have accumulated some $60 billion in greenbacks that are on deposit with commercial banks, principally in the London-based Eurodollar market. Billions more are invested in Treasury bills, stocks, and real estate throughout the U.S. The whole international monetary system, which has been the basis of postwar growth and prosperity, could be plunged into crisis if the banking system is swamped by a deluge of dollars...
Small and big traders and middlemen are charging huge spot-market premiums over and above the OPEC price. Because profits can reach billions a year, you have to expect that the spot trade will increase by hook or crook, and I mean the words literally. When OPEC sees how much money is made on its oil by in-between traders, the producing countries will have no political choice but to increase their own prices and divert more oil to the spot market. That was clear from the moment the Iranian crisis broke. Our Government was made well aware...
Riding on a lot of contacts, a line of credit and sheer gall, a troupe of about 300 international profiteers have become the principal beneficiaries of the galloping oil price increases that occur daily on the "spot market." They are the mysterious players in a loose old-boy network of private investors, former oil executives, foreign government officials, Arab sheiks and assorted middlemen, brokers and hustlers. "Many of them," says Joe Roeber, a London-based analyst of the spot market, "got out of trading used tires or razor blades or whatever else they were doing to start dealing...