"The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The five Founding Members were later joined by nine other Members: Qatar (1961); Indonesia (1962); Socialist Peoples Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (1962); United Arab Emirates (1967); Algeria (1969); Nigeria (1971); Ecuador (1973–1992); Gabon (1975–1994) and Angola (2007). OPEC had its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, in the first five years of its existence. This was moved to Vienna, Austria, on September 1, 1965.


OPEC's objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry."

The above is quoted from OPEC' own website, so I assume that they know what they are talking about.

Now let's have a look at some of James Paul's predictions:

1) "OPEC would be weakened by the withdrawal of one of its key producers from the OPEC quota system."

OPEC is an "intergovernmental Organization" - It has got nothing to do with individual Oil Companies. Exactly when and where has Iraq (a founder member) intimated that it was going to leave OPEC, or even vaguely considered making such a move?

2) "Depending on how things shape up in the next few months, Western oil companies could end up controlling the country's output levels, or the government, heavily influenced by the United States, could even pull out of the cartel entirely."

Eh? No, that is not the way things work. OPEC Members, Government Ministers, agree production quotas. The Energy Ministries in the individual countries then tell those holding licences to produce what the production rates are to be. The individual oil companies cannot circumvent this in any OPEC country as to do so would be to run the risk of losing their licences.