Is OPEC Killing Itelf?

With oil prices sitting at more than 109 dollars a barrel, near the all-time high, you have to think that the title of this article makes me absolutely crazy. In fact, you're right. Billions of dollars are flowing from the West and Asia to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Nations (OPEC). In 2008 the Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that OPEC revenue will hit $927 billion, up 37 percent from 2007. Also, in 2007 profits were also higher than 2006, with Saudi Arabia coming out as the biggest winner earning a cool $124 billion. (In case you're wondering, with about 7,000 member of the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud, they each could buy about 45,000 Ferraris.)

With this kind of success it's hard to argue that OPEC's future will be anything but bright, but that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Weathermaker]

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html

The link provides a detailed energy production/demand in the US. Roughly, we have 1 million megawatts, or 1 trillion watts of total installed power. Do we have the capability to get us off of oil, coal and gas? Absolutely.

Large scale wind farms cost TODAY, with the current technology, about one dollar per watt installed. So with 1 trillion dollars, we could have 100% clean, renewable, domestic produced energy. North Dakota alone has enough wind to generate that much power. Did we have that much money? Sure, Dumbya spent that much on the Iraq adventure.

Solar energy: If the government requires every new home to have solar panels we're good to go. It will increase the value of the house by 10%, but the increase in the mortgage (also by 10%) will be offset by a next to zero electric bill. There are around 100 million homes in the US. If all will have a 4kW solar installation, that is 0.4 trillion watts installed, or 40% of what we need.

So with a combination of wind-solar-hydro we can be energy independent with the technology we have now. Innovation will be a bonus, but all we need now is to wake the hell up.

[mediamarv]

Doesn't appear to be, why do you ask???

[Stanley]

Crisis always creates a manifest shift in beliefs and then choices. Not only are the OPEC burgeoning prices percieved as gluttony, but the mismanaged war in Iraq is a cost of doing business. This will not end our demand for oil right away but give the political will to invest in domestic alternatives and also to rethink our dependency on growth and security being in the hands of hostile nations. This does not add up and OPEC and the middle east will receive the emotional blame. But this will not be a change lead by governments but by everyday people making different choices. Until then the oil cow will be milked and the people bilked. We allowed our selves to be dependent and now there is a gun to our heads. Time to seek rugged individual energy and food independence as a personal goal for everyone.

[realitytrumpsbull]

No, but HuffPo's proofreader/copy editor needs to...'Itelf'? C'mon. The HEADline of the story? Really, now...

Further, on OPEC, I firmly believe that the United States of America can and should provide for its' own domestic energy needs, and should start doing so, post-haste. Figure out how to move 10 tons of a given cargo the distance of 5,280 feet(one mile) without burning a single BTU's-worth of petroleum-derived fuel. Ready, set, go...no, go NOW. Start, begin, commence...

[goodog]

WWI did not bring us the United Nations. You must be thinking of the League of Nations, but your point is well-taken.

[themodernleader]

Your curious, niave, optimistic predictions are not supported by history. When countries run out of energy producing materials in the past, they went down the drain. Only later did new sources of energy become available through the harnessing of science and technology.
It appears that massive scientific discoveries are necessary to provide the necessary break throughs for cheap bountiful supplies of energy for a burgeoning world population. Such breakthroughs are not on the horizon of current progress in science and technology.
A more apt prediction is massive bouts of disease, famine and war as the world comes to terms with over-population. Energy depletion is half the equation: the other half is run-a-way population growth of discontented, anchorless people with televisions and not enough to eat.

[loki]

No they are not killing themselves. Just look at the billions and billions of dollars being spent in saudi, dubia, and other countries that profit off the oil of OPEC. It is the people who use the oils that suffer. And I am not talking about companies like Exxon who make billions a year in profits while the American public suffers.

[LivingStardust]

They will pay for attacking America on 9/11. Eventually. One way or another. Dearly and completely. Saudi Arabia IS the real enemy and some of us HAVE NEVER and WILL NEVER FORGET WHO ATTACKED US.

AND IT WASN'T IRAQ!

[CharltonHestonsGUN]

Love to see OPEC go to the Euro and finish off the evil doer Nazi invaders once and for all.

[maggiemae656]

Yes..........

Let's end this battle to see who can be more corrupt--OPEC or American big oil.

[drkazmd65]

My take on the OPEC'ers - they know they are playing a long term game with a short-term, non-renewable resource. They are getting what they can while they can, and better hope that they get something else to take the place as a revenue source.

They are rapidly becoming a financial center - and given some time, skill and further blunders on our part they could easily supplant NY or London as a financial center this century. They are simultaniously driving us down, while pocketing our money and getting their fingers into our resources over here.

Its a dangerous game and gamble - but they just might win over us. Then they just have to figure out how to deal with more than a billion each of Chinese and Indians.

[HeevenSteven]

...$124 billion. (In case you're wondering, with about 7,000 member of the Saudi royal family, the House of Saud, they each could buy about 45,000 Ferraris....

124,000,000,000 / 7000 / 45000 = 394.
That's $394.00 per Ferrari...??? Someone didn't check their math!

[realitytrumpsbull]

17 million dollars /100k=177 ferraris. Filthy rich doesn't even get you a chair at THAT game...better to be in poverty and an american citizen in the United States than part and party to it though. It's all a crooked filthy racket that gets people killed, OPEC should be abolished.

[truthbrigade]

Dream on; you are "part and party to it though". Exxon / Chevron / Texas Oil mafia will see you dead before they let OPEC go down the drain (OPEC has been very good for and to them). And yet you and Goober Nation put Bush / Cheney in the W/H twice, yes twice.
Wait till OPEC moves to the EURO!..... You made your bed, you lie in it.