Will OPEC Rise Again?

__"OPEC: An Obituary" by Fadhil. J. Chalabi, in Foreign Policy (Winter 1997–98), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.__

It is a very big dog that has not barked in a very long time. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has seen the oil revenues of its 11 member nations tumble from $283 billion in 1980 to $132 billion in 1995, notes Chalabi, who served as OPEC’s acting secretarygeneral between 1983 and ‘88. A world that once trembled when the OPEC oil ministers convened now yawns.

Founded in 1960 by Venezuela and four Persian Gulf producers (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia) seeking to stabilize falling oil prices, OPEC stunned the world with its October 1973 decision to boost the "posted" price of oil by 70 percent, to $5.11 per barrel. (By then, Algeria, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates had joined the cartel.) Then the Arab powers cut production to punish the

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