OPEC COLLAPSES WORLD ECONOMIES!

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries known by its acronym, OPEC has crashed the world economy and must be held responsible for all the hardship facing mankind today. It was a rude joke when crude oil price skyrocketed to $148 dollars per barrel last summer; and despite all the entreaties, cajoling and outright genuflecting by the West, the countries constituting the cartel refused to bulge. These little "big" guys of OPEC countries were feeling like demi-gods, beating their chest on their perceived victory over the West? This blogger remembers the hoofing and puffing of the little man in Tehran, Ahmadenajad, that in Caracas Hugo Chavez and their friend in Moscow, the face of KGB Vladimir Putin? Their pugnacity at challenging the West with their new found energy leverage shows that some people should never lay their hands on real power otherwise the world will be held hostage in perpetuity. The result of their stubbornness is that today, so many world economies have collapsed and several others, on life support.

These guys at OPEC forgot that we are in this together; that the whole world economies are intertwined with one another; that these economies are so connected that if there is a glitch on any of the wheels driving the economy be it in America, Asia or Europe that the ripple effect goes down stream to everyone, everywhere in the globe. They forgot that if America does not buy no one sells and if America does not sell no one buys! So one may ask, what the frigging hell was this OPEC cartel thinking in the first place? Today America has stopped buying and the factories in China, Japan , South Korea etc are scaling down their production. When China does not make money selling to America, they will not have money to buy Sudan's oil and when Sudan does not sell their oil they will not have money to buy Kalashikovs (AK47) guns from Russia with which to kill their citizens in Darfur. When the Russians cannot sell their guns, they will not have money to buy French fine cognacs and Hummer vehicles from America and when America cannot sell their vehicles, the factories either shut down or are downsized and there goes the vicious circle of world economies linked together in an unholy wedlock. What OPEC started is a dance of death which forebodes no one any good. They simply do not have control, despite their oil. It is a domino-effect where one fall triggers series of falls. The chain reaction goes on and on and before you could say Jack Robinson, the entire world economy is near comatose! The irony of this is that some of these OPEC countries like Iran does not even have the capacity or the know-how to refine their own crude oil or to develop its refining capacity. They buy refined gas from foreign refineries at the same high price and Icheokudotcom wonders what then is the use of the stubborn price hike?

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a cartel of 13 countries including Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela has its headquarters in Vienna, pictured below. It was founded in 1960 in Baghdad - Iraq, at the initiative of then Venezuelan Energy and Mines minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo and his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Energy and Mines minister Abdullah al-Tariki, to unify and coordinate members' petroleum policies. Although OPEC's ability to control the price of oil has diminished somewhat since the 1973 oil war, due to the discovery and development of large oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, and the opening up of Russia oil to the west; OPEC nations still account for two-thirds of the world's oil reserves, and as of March 2008, controls 35.6% of the world's oil production.. Icheokudotcom says this is an example of what is possible were the West to succeed in its present quest to source alternative source of oil. Breaking the strangle-hold which OPEC has on the world energy supply will be hilarious indeed!

The next largest group of producers are members of the OECD and the Post-Soviet states which produce only 23.8% and 14.8%, respectively, of the world's total oil production.

These countries of OPEC, if they are smart should start placating the West now, otherwise, before too long they will be forced to 'drink' their oil since no one will be needing it any longer. The West, especially America are investing massively in alternative energy sources of solar, wind, natural gas, ocean-tide etc and with their well known shared, dogged determination will have a meaningful break-through soon, to render cartels like OPEC irrelevant. This is the time, for OPEC to hire hard-charging lobbyists to try and slow down the wildfire which the quest for alternative sources of energy has assumed in the West. Billionaire T-Boon Pickings alone, has invested over $2billion of his personal fortune into alternative energy research and development in the areas of wind and natural gas. President-elect Barack Obama owes to the American people, alternative energy supply sources, being one of his campaign promises - to set America free from the shackles of foreign oil. What becomes of the mono-economies of these OPEC countries once this oil freedom is secured is better imagined than fathomed as some of them will go bankrupt, turning into failed states with no money to support their existence. In the long run, nobody saves anything - American people started driving less because gas prices were too high, then some people stopped driving entirely, trading-in their vehicles; then the car manufacturing plants cut down on their manufacturing and more people who cannot afford their cars also entered the anti-driving group. Bicycle sales shot up and it is hard for people to come back since they are now used to a new normal. The effect is that some factories shot down, companies closed, fleets of airplanes were grounded all contributing to non use of gasoline hence less demand for OPEC oil.

The target for the West is to make oil a dinosaur that once was and it is our forecast that before too long oil will be out-fashioned. As has been shown by the recent downward spiral of oil from the high pedestal of $148 to today's misery $58, one thing is clear - these OPEC countries have no real control over their oil. They cannot find it! They cannot harvest or exploit it! They cannot transport it! They cannot refine it! They cannot buy it! If left with it, they do not know the heck what to do with it! If the West do not buy their oil they cannot sell it, so what the frigging hell are these heartless cartel OPEC thinking about. As far as Icheokudotcom is concerned the price of crude might as well fall to as low as $21.75 per a barrel so that Saudi Arabia and their minions in OPEC can learn one hard lesson in how not to be too mean-spirited. They failed to come to the rescue when oil price was squeezing so many Western countries and their economies. One good turn deserves another. It was their pure greed and ruthlessness that made OPEC to allow oil price to get out of control to as high up as $148 per barrel. One wonders how the world economy could have supported such a bloated price of oil - the engine and life blood of the world economy? Some of their membership were glee at the prospect of forcing the great America to its knees, God forbid! Don't these guys know that God blessed and is continuously blessing America?

Icheokudotcom calls the present free-fall of crude oil price, which has shaved off about $86 from its astronomical price of $148 to today's $58 within the last five months, a retribution from God. It is OPEC in QUANDARY! It will soon be a daylight nightmare for those little monolithic - economies of OPEC countries, when massive investments on alternative energy sources start bearing fruits. OPEC will then be cut to their actual size, with the demand for oil drastically reduced if not completely dried up! Until then, Icheokudotcom says, Good luck OPEC!