Petroleum is an essential commodity. Its price can boost economies or send them reeling. One of the most influential groups in controlling the global benchmark price for petroleum is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), founded in Baghdad on Sept. 14, 1960.
According to the group’s website, opec.org, OPEC is an international organization of 11 developing countries, which are heavily reliant on oil revenues as their main source of income. The current members are Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Since oil revenues are so vital for the economic development of these nations, they use their participation in OPEC to bring stability and harmony to the oil market by adjusting their oil output to help ensure a balance between supply and demand. OPEC’s members collectively supply about 40 percent of the world’s oil output, and possess more than three-quarters of the world’s total proven crude oil reserves.
At opec.org questions about the petroleum industry are answered and details on crude oil and its uses are provided. There are also statistics on member nations, publications to download and of course, the daily basket price of crude oil.
