6139008-History-of-Money

taxes, and the majors were assured supplies of crude oil with which to supply their global market. The interests divergedin that the majors did not care where the oil came from as long as it was reliable. They willingly took oil from non-OPECmembers like the United States, Britain, and Norway (and rushed to sign contracts with former Communist nations too).The majors were only under the influence of OPEC only as long as OPEC nations held the crude oil that they needed. OPECnations once again came to depend on the Seven Sisters as soon as OPEC oil became optional rather than necessary forthe major oil companies. There are 13 important members of OPEC. The five largest producers and exporters in the groupare in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and the other members are Libya,Venezuela, Algeria, Nigeria, Gabon, Indonesia, Ecuador, and Qatar. The major oil producing nations outside OPEC are theUS, Russia, Britain, and Norway, but the US is a net importer, and the others do not contribute much to the open Worldmarket.OPEC tries to keep oil prices high by keeping production within limits, assigning a production quota to each member.There is always a temptation for producing countries to cheat on the quotas assigned to them by the cartel, especially ifthey have urgent needs for cash. Cheating is particularly easy on the international oil market. Only the meters on theoilfield pumps and pipelines, and the tanker operators, can keep track of volumes of crude oil, and once on the high seasor into the network of international pipelines, oil quickly loses all traces of its country of origin. With the cooperation ofdistributors and marketers, any country can pump more than its quota, more or less with impunity. OPEC has alwayslacked the ability to monitor and police its members' production. (The majors can and do monitor World oil flow, butapparently do not share information with OPEC, a demonstration that their interests may be parallel with OPEC, but notidentical.) In fact, however, just as before, World production remains reasonably stable. This can only be accomplished byaction of the majors, and there is little doubt that they do this: from self-interest, not to help OPEC.For example, in 1989 the oil ministers of the OPEC countries agreed on quotas that totaled 22.1 million barrels a day forthe first half of 1990, planning that that volume would keep the price of crude oil on the World market at about $18 abarrel, their target price since 1986. In fact, the OPEC countries between them probably pumped about 23.5 millionbarrels a day, maintaining a surplus supply of crude oil into World markets, and dropping the price of crude oil. (It hadbeen $20.46 in late January 1990, but reached a low of $13.64 by June 1990.) By the midyear meeting in July 1990,tempers were running high, and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq massed 30,000 troops on the borders of Kuwait,allegedly one of the OPEC members cheating most on its quota. Saddam Hussein claimed that the loss in revenue to Iraqalone had been $14 billion in 1989. At about the same time, the American Petroleum Institute announced that US importsnow constituted an all-time high of 49.9% of consumption, and prices immediately rose to $19.61 a barrel in theanticipation that OPEC would try to squeeze supplies. It was widely anticipated that Hussein's pressure on Kuwait, and theAmerican announcement, would encourage OPEC to set an attainable limit on production of 22.5 million barrels a day, andthat the price would reach $20 once again. In fact, on July 27, OPEC agreed on a target price of $21 a barrel at thatproduction level, which was economically unrealistic but perhaps served some internal political agenda. On the day of thenews, the international price reached $20.39 a barrel.Events were rapidly overtaken by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War that followed. But even then, the temporaryremoval of Kuwaiti oil as well as Iraqi oil from World markets made very little difference to either supply or price. In fact,as Kuwaiti production was re-established in 1992 and 1993, the World position of OPEC worsened still further. By summer1993, OPEC countries were pumping 25 million barrels/day, even with Iraqi exports at a virtual standstill. The price of oilremained very low at around $15-$20/barrel for most of the 1990s. The OPEC nations were reportedly able to agree inprinciple on reducing production to help prop up the price, but could not agree on who was to slow production, or by howmuch. Meanwhile gasoline was selling in the United States for a cost that in real money was as low as it had been indecades. No-one in the Middle East wanted to say so aloud, but their worst-case scenario in the 1990s was the day that acash-hungry Iraq released from UN sanctions would once more allowed to export as much crude oil as it wanted to! In theJune 1991 (after the First Gulf War) meeting of Bilderbergers in Baden Baden, Germany, David Rockefeller said: "We aregrateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors haveattended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years… It would have been impossiblefor us to develop our plan for the World if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, theWorld is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a World government. The supranational sovereignty ofan intellectual elite and World Bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."Among those in attendance was then governor Bill Clinton and Dan Quayle.In 1999 the price of crude oil dropped close to $12/barrel. This frightened OPEC into real cooperation, and as I write thisin early 2000, the OPEC nations seem to be operating at close to their agreed quotas, and the price of crude oil is at a 9-year high, around $30 a barrel. Probably OPEC calculates that this is around the price that the industrial nations canafford to pay without major damage to their currently prosperous economies. It will be up to OPEC to continue to finetunetheir production, without repeating the events that led to the collapse of crude oil prices in the 1980s. The break-upof the Soviet Union had dramatic effects on the oil resources within its boundaries. The old Soviet Union had immensereserves of oil and especially of gas, but a decaying infrastructure that was already resulting in decreased production bythe end of the 1980s. The Soviet Union had a structure of pipelines that essentially gathered production and funnelled itwestward into Eastern Europe, where it was sold to the former Soviet satellite countries, particularly to East Germany.Russia, as the largest successor state, retains the bulk of that system, and has huge fields of oil and gas that can continueto provide it with its own fuel supply and a surplus for export. However, many of the fields, even within Russia, requiremodernization and exploration that present-day Russia cannot afford. Contracts with Western oil companies are slowlyand carefully being negotiated, but the precarious nature of Russian politics and the Russian economy are seriousproblems. As I write, the Russian Government and the largest energy company in Russia, Gazprom, are at daggers drawnThe Hidden History Of Money & New World Order Usury Secrets Revealed at last! Page 625