The West Begs OPEC

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 2, 5:08AM EDT

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Begging is not manly, but it can be effective.

Yesterday, according to the FT, "Andris Piebalds, the European energy commissioner, urged Opec to increase oil production." And, Guy Caruso, a senior official at the US Department of Energy, warned that unless OPEC increased production further, the market “will be short of barrels in the first quarter of 2008”.

In the last week or two, as oil has moved toward $100 a barrel, it has begun to occur to government officials, economists, and business leaders that prices at that level could cause a huge slowdown in the global economy. China is already rationing fuel. That cold put a brake on its growth.

OPEC has resisted calls to increase production, but that could change quickly. Its members do not need a deep recession any more than the rest of the world. And, a profound slowdown could drop oil prices by half, it demand plummets. It is hard to remember, but oil has been below $60 in the last year.

A number of OPEC countries also rely on the US and its allies for aid, technology, and military protection. These are valuable bargaining chips for the West, and no one should think that the US and other countries would not hesitate to use them.

OPEC is going to release more oil, and soon.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.