High Price of Oil Alarms Even OPEC ; $70-a-Barrel Level Could Cut Future Demand through Recession or Conservation

Mark Trumbull writer of The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor

Reasons for today's high oil prices are so numerous that levels above $60 per barrel seem almost inevitable: from rising global demand and new nationalism in Latin America to a tense standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Those issues are all real enough. But behind them all is a bigger factor, so obvious it almost passes notice: the OPEC cartel. Without the supply constraints imposed over many years by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the price of oil today would be far lower, analysts say.

"We live in a world where there's a functioning cartel in the oil market," says Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for …

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Publication information: Article title: High Price of Oil Alarms Even OPEC ; $70-a-Barrel Level Could Cut Future Demand through Recession or Conservation. Contributors: Mark Trumbull writer of The Christian Science Monitor - Author. Newspaper title: The Christian Science Monitor. Publication date: May 1, 2006. Page number: 1. © 2009 The Christian Science Publishing Society. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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