Word: opec
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...past, Saudi Arabia had been the one to stabilize OPEC's overall production level. As the so-called swing producer, the rich Saudis would cut back their output to offset the excess pumping of other members. In 1986 the Saudis got tired of playing the sucker and flooded the market with their unrivaled stores of crude, pushing prices down in an attempt to punish the cheaters and force them to play straight. That method proved of little value in taming Kuwait and the U.A.E., which have rich petroleum reserves and tend to favor lower prices as a way of discouraging...
...billion to $20 billion in loans from them for its war effort. But now that the cease-fire with Iran is two years old, Iraq is rebuilding its oil industry. With an output of 3.14 million bbl. a day, Iraq is tied with Iran for the rank of OPEC's second largest producer. Both trail Saudi Arabia's output of 5.42 million...
...other members of OPEC were spooked by the bellicose way Iraq went about bridling Kuwait and the U.A.E. OPEC Secretary-General Subroto called Saddam's means "alarming." By threatening the overproducers, Saddam brought tensions in the Persian Gulf to their highest level since the Iran-Iraq war. So startled was the U.A.E. that it took the unprecedented step of asking the U.S. to conduct joint military maneuvers, a request Washington granted, sending two aerial refueling planes and six combat ships for the exercise. When Baghdad denounced this "imperialist plot," the Emirates, more shaken than ever, denied anything...
Backed by his chemical-weapons arsenal and million-man army, Iraq's Saddam Hussein has become increasingly belligerent. But the Arab world was taken by surprise last week when Saddam rattled his saber at fellow OPEC members Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. He accused the two countries of "stabbing Iraq in the back with a poisoned dagger" by conspiring with the U.S. to glut the world oil market. By some estimates, lower oil prices caused by overproduction have cost Iraq, whose debt is as much as $70 billion, some $14 billion in lost revenue. Iraq also charged Kuwait with...
Despite the warning, an Iraq-Kuwait war is considered unlikely. U.S. officials believe Saddam's verbal blast is part of his campaign to dominate the Arab world and a hard-nosed tactic to force other oil producers to back Iraq when OPEC ministers hold their biannual summit this week in Geneva. Still, officials do not dismiss the possibility that Saddam might back his words with action...