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Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
OPEC countries- The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is a intergovernmental Organization of permanent nature, formed at the Baghdad Conference on September 10–14, 1960, by Iran, Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
Headquarter
Headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
Members
As of 2021, it has a total of 13 Member Countries which are:
Algeria, Angola, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Rep of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Venezuela.
OPEC’s objective
- coordinate and unify crude oil and petroleum policies among Member Countries.
- Ensure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers members.
- Ensure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum products to consumer nations;
- Ensure a fair return on capital to those investing in the oil industry.
How it functions?
- They meets twice a year and decides production quotas for each member.
- They can control oil production since most of the member nations have state-run oil firms.
- There main objective is to coordinate petroleum policies among its member nations and achieve a stable price for petroleum producers.
- Members countries depends heavily on revenue from oil sales. High oil prices can hurt demand worldwide and low prices can affect the revenue of Opec+ nations. So this Oil producing nations grouping tries to balance crude oil prices from getting too low or too high.
Download OPEC countries map 2021 with timeline
Download OPEC+ Countries List in 2021
OPEC+
As of 2021 opec+ have 22 members which include 13 opec members and 9 non opec members
The Non-OPEC countries which exports Crude oil along with 13 opec members are termed as OPEC+ countries.
Members of OPEC+ in 2021
Algeria, Angola, Rep of Congo, Equatorial Guinea,Saudi Arabia, UAE, Venezuela, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria. Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Oman, Russia, Sudan, South Sudan
- The OPEC bloc is led by Saudi Arabia and Russia is the biggest oil producer amongst the non-OPEC members.
- OPEC with 13 members controls 35% of global oil supplies and 82% of reserves. These figures increase upto 55% and 90% respectively with the addition of 9 non-OPEC members. This enables the OPEC+ group to have substantially high control of oil prices around the world economy.
India and OPEC in 2021
- In April 2021 India have pressed for easing cuts in crude oil production stating high oil prices are hurting the consumption-led recovery of several countries
- India maintains the stand that crude oil supply should be market determined rather than artificially managed by OPEC+ members.
- OPEC and OPEC Plus have announced a slight easing of crude production cuts in last week of March 2021, even though it is still far below the originally announced schedule of cuts.
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