Word: opec
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nears a once unthinkable $100 a bbl., Chávez can afford to delay costly drilling and refining expansions like Paraguaná's and spend that money on socialist programs and other political pursuits. In a bravado performance at a Nov. 18 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Chávez and his new best friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, mocked the U.S. and blamed the weak dollar, not Venezuelan production capacity, for the high price of oil. "The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar," Chávez crowed. "It's the fall of the American...
Venezuela B.C.--before Chávez--could usually be relied on to do that, especially when things got dicey in the Middle East. In the 1990s, a more U.S.-friendly PDVSA ambitiously raised output (even defying its OPEC quota) to earn revenue for new drilling projects. But when Chávez and his anti-U.S. agenda took office in February 1999, prices were languishing at about $10 a bbl.--so the former paratroop commander campaigned to revive OPEC, persuading the cartel to rein in production to boost prices. The effort paid off when the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq shook...
Saudi officials used the occasion of an OPEC summit in Riyadh in mid-November to say they could up production at any time. But that raises the pesky question of why they don't. So far, the answer from OPEC leaders has been that high prices are the fault of speculators and the falling dollar, not low production. They're not just blowing smoke. Lynn Westfall, chief economist of refiner Tesoro Corp., says there's more than enough oil for sale right now. The price pressure, he explains, "is coming from financial participants in futures markets...
...OPEC's members are not able to boost production in coming years, though, it will be impossible to keep blaming the traders as prices rise. What happens then? "If we had better data, we could hold a global summit and say, 'Gentlemen, it's nobody's fault, but we've peaked,'" says Simmons. "We've got to embrace some conservation practices that are draconian, or we will be at war with each other...
...European and Arab allies, fearful that the stalemate raises the likelihood of military confrontation before President Bush leaves office in January 2008, there was another lifeline - or straw, depending on your perspective - offered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the weekend. During a visit to Saudi Arabia for an OPEC summit, the usually provocative Iranian President told an interviewer Iran would consider an Arab proposal for offshoring its industrial uranium enrichment in a neutral country such as Switzerland...