Here is an excerpt Chibuzo Nwoke's Third World Minerals and Global Pricing (Zed, 1987) which makes use of the analysis by Massarrat in the Nore volume. "The actual world market price of crude oil is thus governed by the individual price of coal production and the great demand for coal in the world energy market. the point of this analysis is that it is obvious that substantial surplus profits, or absolute rents, are created in the international oil industry tooday. If collusion within OPEC could be effectively implemented, the rewards to its member govts could be substantial. This reward, or increasing shares of absolute rent, could be obtained if the OPEC organization priced oil just below the price of the cheapest substitute for oil, that is, coal. "If OPEC were an effective cartel, the substantial absolute rent in the intl oil industry today would be captured by its member govts as monopoly gains. However, because of the inability of the govts to exploit their producer power, only a modest amount of this surplus was, for a long time, actually captured by them. "As a result of OPEC govts' weakness at operating an effective cartel, before the so called energy crisis they failed to capture a large part of the surplus profit from oil. Instead, even today, this surplus is shared by the govts of the industrialized world and their oil MNCs. The govts of the industrialized world can capture part of this surplus profit in the form of petroleum taxes on that part of the annual crude oil production of the oPEC countries that they actually imported. And their oil MNCs can capture part of the surplus as excess, or super, profits from that part of OPEC's oil production that htey control in their concessionary areas... "The threat of the perceived power of the OECD govts vis a vis OPEC govts will be magnified if, in addition to the economic levels at their disposal, the former's military and politcial power are also taken into account...On the whole the defensive strategies of the industrialized world have fostered splits within the ranks of OPEC. In this respect, within OPEC, the ruling class of Saudi Arabia has proved to the be the most important ally of imperialism and the industrialized countries' govts "For example, as Massarrat put it: 'when one group of OPEC grouped around Iran announced a 30% increase in the posted price for oil from 1 Oct 1975, Yamani, the Saudi Arabian oil minister, firmly rejected it and pleaded instead for the freezing of the price. By threatening to leave OPEC, increase its production and offer its oil at a cheaper rate on teh world market than the other OPEC, Saudi Arabia succeeeded in keeping thei increase down--officially to 10% but in reality to 6.8%. "Saudi Arabia's (and others) divisive poliices within OPEC are due to political pressure of the OECD govts, especially that of the United States." p.102 There is also a helpful book by Pierre Terzian on OPEC, but most of my cites are old--it's mostly books and articles which I read during the US-Iraq war a decade ago, and I haven't kept up. Rakesh
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