The Real Gas Threat - from OPEC
Americans worried about gas prices should look overseas to the supply-controlling cartel. Here's a peek inside.
By Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., Special to BMI
Business & Media Institute
3/26/2008 11:39:23 AM
Skyrocketing gasoline prices may be pushing the U.S. economy over the edge, but the oil-rich lords of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil cartel don’t give a hoot.
Chakib Khelil, OPEC’s president and Algeria’s oil minister, has warned that oil may go to $120 a barrel. Khelil is an optimist – if one or more of the major oil producers, such as Iran or Venezuela, gets embroiled in a conflict or otherwise destabilizes, oil could go up beyond $130 a barrel, experts say.
And OPEC, whose members are getting rich and fat strapping astronomical oil prices on the backs of working American families, have the audacity to blame the U.S. for the current outrage: “…the truth is that the current prices are linked to US economic problems as well as to the value of the dollar,” Khelil said, according to a recent London Times report.
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Dependence on imported oil threatens the U.S. with a long-term economic decline and loss of sovereignty, according to Luft. It allows OPEC governments, many of which do not have our best interests in mind, not only to laugh all the way to the bank but to own the bank. The recent buyout by foreign governments of chunks of America's prime symbols of economic prowess – like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Blackstone Group – is only a preview of what is yet to come should the petrodollar-fueled transfer of wealth continue.
At current oil prices it would take OPEC just six days to buy GM and three years to buy a 20-percent voting block in every S&P 500 company. This kind of buying power, amassed by the oil producers, can eventually threaten the West's economic and political sovereignty, and influence not only our domestic business practices, but also our most deeply held ethical, religious, and spiritual values.
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