Dear Editor,

Here we go again, Saudi Arabia and the Organization of Petroleum and Exporting Countries (OPEC) are once again playing Russian roulette with the world oil prices.

Last year, because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, the world’s economy was in lockdown mode, so there were hardly any great demand for oil. But now that the economy is starting to open up they’ve decided to cut production in order to maintain high oil prices in order to make up for lost revenues.

There’s no justification for this, just greed.

I think the time has come to dissolve that organisation, because its members are irresponsible and uncaring. They have no concern for developing counties. They only care about their oil revenues.

The Saudis, for example, use their massive oil wealth to buy sophisticated arms and planes to fight unnecessary wars in the Middle East.

Instead of appealing to OPEC to increase production, US President Joe Biden should lift the sanctions on the other oil-producing countries to offset OPEC’s monopoly.

There’s no oil shortage in the world. The United States was the biggest customer and has now become the largest producer of crude oil. As a matter of fact, the world right now is swimming in oil, and it would remain that way if the respective countries were allowed to compete with each other for market share without the shackles of OPEC. This would benefit the oil-consuming nations, instead of them issuing quotas to artificially keeping the price of oil high.

For example, not too long ago oil was practically being given away. So how come we have moved from a low to over US$70 per barrel in today’s market. Something is definitely wrong with this scenario. What I’m saying is crude oil prices should be based on supply and demand. Therefore, I’m appealing to developing countries like Jamaica so conserve energy so as not to enrich the OPEC’s conglomerate.

Even though I like green energy, oil will be with us for some time to come. Therefore, President Biden should allow the Keystone Pipeline project to continue. The OPEC people, including the Wall Street speculators, would like to see crude oil prices break the US$100 price barrier when realistically oil prices should be in the US$30 range.

Noel Mitchell

Westchester, New York, USA

nlmworld@yahoo.com