This week marks the 60th anniversary of OPEC, the cartel of major oil exporters that has, at times, held sway over the oil markets. It is a good time to ask: Is it still effective? The truth is that OPEC’s power to impact the price of oil has waxed and waned over the past 60 years but has always been based on the portion of global spare capacity that it controls. With plenty of crude sloshing around in storage tanks worldwide, that makes it not so effective now.
When the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was formed in 1960, it had two missions. The first was defend the price of oil through limits on oil production.
