OIL COMPANIES AND OPEC: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) came into being due to the exploitation witnessed from oil companies that were interestingly controlled by western nations that were oil consumers rather than producers. Before OPEC therefore came into the politics of oil at the global level the major control of oil was by the different oil companies that were appreciably under the firm authority of western nation that had to pay for the oil produced by developing countries. It can therefore be stated and ascertained that the politics of oil had always been between those developed, western, wealthy and technologically advanced nations against those countries that were developing but had appreciable reserves of oil and much better production level than the developed countries. The coming of OPEC signified what should be viewed as an end to the exploitative tendencies of the western nations that directly employed the opportunity of oil companies under their control to considerably destroy what ordinarily should have been a source of power to the oil producers. The Pre OPEC years therefore represented a very firm attitude by the West to continue what has been seen as the status quo in which the West had always played a master-servant relationship with the oil producers nations predominantly developing countries. it is important to note that before OPEC came into the fore the global community had been divided into two made up of those that design whose regulating international relations and another group that only have to obey those rules designed.