Word: opec
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...prices heads for a possible $4 a gallon in the U.S. this summer, it's tempting to blame Big Oil - as many in Congress did last week -for its bloated profits greased by generous tax breaks. But the players in the oil-producing world see things a little differently. OPEC officials, oil executives and oil-rich governments met Thursday in Paris at the International Oil Summit, to share their thoughts on the global energy crunch. Total chief executive Christophe de Margerie and Royal Dutch Shell's exploration chief Malcolm Brinded told officials from oil-rich countries that they needed more...
...companies had left, and was mobbed by photographers and television reporters who waited for hours to catch him on camera. With Saudi Arabia sitting atop the world's biggest known energy reserves - 264 billion barrels of oil and nearly 258 trillion cubic feet of gas - Naimi is OPEC's leading figure, who can slash or boost world oil prices within minutes by a turn of phrase...
...major cause of current high oil prices, of course, is record demand, fueled first and foremost by China's booming economy. "China is the major factor in demand," says OPEC research director Hasan Qabazard. He predicts that world oil demand will increase about 30% to 118 million barrels...
...these days, there's no shortage of customers elsewhere in the world. (There are also plenty of investors pouring billions into oil futures as a hedge against the falling dollar - and so driving up oil prices even more.) The major reason for the current high prices is that OPEC's production has been seriously stretched by the huge increase in demands from booming China and India, as well as from oil-rich countries in the Middle East itself, says Lawrence Eagles, chief economist of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, the watchdog for oil-consuming countries like the United States...
...OPEC members are also haunted by the organization's misstep in 1998, when they voted to boost production quotas shortly before the Asian economic crisis hit. That sent oil crashing to $10 a barrel. Such prices may now seem like ancient history, but as Cheney flies out to the Middle East, he'll be visiting a region where ancient history can seem very fresh indeed...