Oil Geopolitics and OPEC

The modern politics of oil begins with the transformation of a commodity once dominated by Western "Seven Sisters" companies — Standard Oil's successors, Anglo-Persian (later BP), Shell, and others — into a resource increasingly controlled by producer states themselves. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad in September 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, in direct response to unilateral price cuts imposed on them by the major oil companies. Over subsequent decades OPEC expanded to include Qatar, Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Nigeria, Ecuador (which later withdrew), Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Congo-Brazzaville, with Indonesia joining and later leaving. Headquartered in Vienna since 1965, OPEC's stated purpose is to coordinate and unify petroleum policies among member states in order to secure fair and stable prices, an efficient supply, and a steady income to producing countries — a cartel logic that depends on members restraining national output below what a purely competitive market would produce.