Former members

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 409.

Country	Region	Joined OPEC	Left OPEC
Gabon	Africa
Indonesia	South East Asia

Some commentators consider that the United States was a de facto member during its formal occupation of Iraq due to its leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority. But this is not borne out by the minutes of OPEC meetings, as no U.S. representative attended in an official capacity.

Indonesia left OPEC in 2009 because it ceased to be a net exporter of oil. It could not fulfill the demand of its own country's needs, as growth in demand outstripped output. The situation was made worse because of weak legal certainty and corruption that deterred foreign investors from investing in new reserves in Indonesia. In recent times, the government has increased financial incentives for foreign firms to invest in exploration and extraction but has found itself forced to import more supplies from the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indonesia's departure from OPEC will not likely affect the amount of oil it produces or imports. The country's growing dependence on imports is proving increasingly expensive as global prices soar.

OPEC is a swing producer and its decisions have had considerable influence on international oil prices. For example, in the 1973 energy crisis some OPEC members refused to ship oil to western countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War, which Israel had fought against Egypt and Syria. This refusal caused a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on October 17, 1973, and ending on March 18, 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on January 7, 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%. At that time, OPEC nations — including many who had recently nationalized their oil industries — joined the call for a new international economic order to be initiated by coalitions of primary producers. Concluding the First OPEC Summit in Algiers they called for stable and just commodity prices, an international food and agriculture program, technology transfer from North to South, and the democratization of the economic system. Overall, the evidence suggests that OPEC did act as a cartel when it adopted output rationing in order to maintain price.

According to US government, in 2011 OPEC will break above the $1 trillion mark earnings for the first time at $1.034 trillion and it is beating the $965 billion peak set in 2008.

OPEC Quotas and Production in thousands of barrels per day
Country	Quota (7/1/05)	Production (1/07)	Capacity
Saudi Arabia	10,099	9,800	12,500
Algeria		1,360	1,430
Angola	1,900	1,700	1,700
Ecuador
Iran	4,110	3,700	3,750
Iraq		1,481
Kuwait	2,247	2,500	2,600
Libya	1,500	1,650	1,700
Nigeria	2,306	2,250	2,250
Qatar
United Arab Emirates	2,444	2,500	2,600
Venezuela	3,225	2,340	2,450
Total	29,971	29,591	30,330

Literature:

1. Krishna, Vijay (2002), Auction Theory, San Diego, USA: Academic Press

2. Milgrom, Paul (2004), Putting Auction Theory to Work, Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press

3. Shubik, Martin (March 2004), The Theory of Money and Financial Institutions: Volume 1, Cambridge , Mass., USA: MIT Press, pp. 213–219