The geopolitics of oil in the Trump era

BY THIERRY MEYSSAN – The United States led different policies in the hydrocarbon sector. 
President Jimmy Carter considered that his country needed this source of energy, and that access to Middle East oil was a question of « national security ». The Arabs and the Persians could not refuse to sell them its black gold or to exaggerate its cost. (…) President Donald Trump took power when his country had become the world’s leading producer. He decided to overturn US strategy (…)

According to the Pompeo doctrine, it is not a question of reducing world production to the level of demand per quotas of production, such as the OPEP+ has instituted for the last two years, but by closing the door on certain large-scale exporters – Iran, Venezuela and Syria (whose gigantic reserves were discovered only recently, and are not yet being exploited). The NOPEC project (No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act) should therefore soon emerge from the archives. This proposed law, of which numerous variants were introduced to Congress two decades ago, is aimed at eliminating the sovereign immunity that the OPEP countries invoke in order to form a cartel, despite US anti-trust laws. It would enable the pursuance before US tribunals of all the state-members of OPEP+, despite their having been nationalised, for having profited from their dominant position, and would therefore influence the rise in prices. CONTINUE READING