Greed and Crisis...

Opec to haul in $1 trillion as oil prices increase risk of double-dip recession

Daily Telegraph, 15 Jun 2011
The cartel of oil-producing countries will have $1 trillion (£600bn) in revenues for the first time this year.

Forecasts from the US government show that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), whose key members include Saudi Arabia and Iran, will collect a third more in revenues because prices have averaged $111 per barrel this year.

But Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said that the current price of $120 per barrel could be the catalyst for a global economic crisis on the scale of the one experienced in 2008.

“If you don’t see any softening of the prices, there is a risk of derailing the economy, of a double-dip,” Dr Birol told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Change Summit. “We all know what happened in 2008. Are we going to see the same movie?”