Word: opec
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...OPEC finds that it is a crude, crude world
...past decade, the 13 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries were faced last week with a long list of things going against them: plunging oil prices, oversupplies, excessive production, drooping consumption, world recession with fears of depression. Even Humorist Art Buchwald was having fun with OPEC's woes. The columnist "quotes" a man from Qatar as saying: "Since the oil glut we've had to cancel four palaces, and make do with three used 747s for our sheiks...
Poor, poor OPEC, Buchwald went on, needling the oil producers, who have ballooned their prices from $3 to as high as $41 per bbl. in eight years, swelled their treasuries unimaginably, twice plunged the industrialized world into recession and contributed to an inflationary spiral that is unmatched in peacetime history. Now that those producers have impaled themselves on a horn of plenty, Buchwald urged Americans to have a heart and to "do unto them what they have done unto...
...fact, Malaysia has already begun a series of informal meetings with the goal of setting up a "Tinpec," a cartel similar to OPEC, that would attempt to control world supplies and prices of tin. It even wanted to supplant the London futures market with one of its own, in its capital city of Kuala Lumpur. As if to show that the cartel was already working, Malaysia announced this month that it plans to cut its production by 25%, to 45,000 tons, thus driving up the price...
...industry watchers are always nervous that a comparable upheaval in Saud Arabia would cause even more dramatic price increases, and have even more disastrous consequences for Western economies. Thus the curren oversupply of oil should be used by the West as an opportunity to decrease further its dependence upon OPEC rather than as an excuse to ignore an energy crisis that will not go away. -By Christopher Byron. Reported by Lawrence Malkin/Paris and Frederick Ungeheuer/New York