The Oil Producing Countries

The first factor is the relationship between oil prices and economic growth in the oil producing countries.

Second, there is the relationship between oil prices and the need for income diversification in the oil producing countries.

Finally, the data show that corruption is highest in oil and gas producing countries.

The dollar confusion encouraged the oil producers to form their (briefly) highly effective cartel, OPEC.

The oil producing countries have suffered a sudden reversal of fortune.

While oil exporting countries receive revenues in dollars (or their euro equivalent), they use different currencies to import goods and services from various countries.

Other than in oil producing countries, development in West Asian countries has been disappointing.

At the same time, oil hedging not only raises oil prices but results in huge reserves of cash in oil producing countries.

It should be noted that the increase in energy prices was not limited to oil. Furthermore, oil producing countries were paying a high price for the technology which they were importing.

China and India have been crisscrossing the globe making financially and politically costly deals to try to lock up the output of new oil producing countries.

The increase in energy demand has already led to power shortages in the oil producing countries, which are expected to reduce exports this summer.

But the oil producers woes are not necessarily bad news.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India, and some of the oil producing countries are in a very strong countertrend.

First, the oil producing countries and China will continue to export substantially more than they import.

Second, more investment is needed, particularly in low income countries, emerging markets, and oil producers (though less in China, the exception that proves the rule).

The issue of the responsibility of non State actors to respect minority rights was raised in regard to the activities of transnational corporations in the oil producing Niger Delta of Nigeria.

Examples of rentier states include oil producing countries in the Middle East region including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Qatar as well as states such as Venezuela and Libya in Latin America and North Africa, all of whom are members of OPEC.

If that were not enough, Bush s threat of sanctions against Iran poses the risks of interruptions of supplies from one of the world s largest producers.

The PDP did, however, fend off challenge in the oil producing Niger Delta, President Goodluck Jonathan s home region.

On the issue of the recent stress felt by oil importing countries, which were facing increasing balance of payment limitations, there could be greater cooperation between the oil producing and oil consuming countries.

While oil exporting countries receive revenues in dollars (or their euro equivalent), they use different currencies to import goods and services from various countries. Any change in the exchange rate of the dollar affects the purchasing power of these countries, and therefore their real income.

Estimates of its newfound oil reserves place it in eighth place among oil producing nations, ahead of Nigeria as well as Brazil s rival for influence in Latin America,Venezuela.

The complementarities between countries rich in human resources and oil producing states should be harnessed, while energy derived investment must be diverted from the old markets of the West to the Gulf s troubled hinterland.

At the same time, however, purely bilateral negotiations between individual EU members and oil and gas producing countries weakens the member states bargaining power, as well as undermining Europe s geopolitical weight in world affairs.

The observer for Nigeria acknowledged the existence of environmental problems in the oil producing area of Nigeria and presented information on measures taken to address that issue.

The rhetoric of energy independence in the oil consuming countries makes the situation even worse the oil producing countries are building energy intensive industries to guarantee a market for their oil once consuming nations wean themselves of imported oil.

But Nigeria s mounting social and political problems reveal how violence and uncertainty in yet another major energy producer is driving foreign investors out and global oil prices up.

Given the current turmoil in the Middle East, the loss of Libyan and Yemeni oil, and increasing energy demand in the oil producing countries, any increase in Saudi oil exports, if any, would have a limited impact on the market.

Brunei Darussalam

Moreover, as oil consuming countries aim for energy independence, producing countries will try to shield themselves by building energy intensive industries so they can export oil embedded in industrial products.

That would mean a catastrophic loss of state revenues for today s major Arab oil producing countries, rendering them highly vulnerable to the compounding consequences of existing water shortages, rapid demographic expansion, climate change, and declining crop yields.

As a result, West African oil producers will be earning an estimated 200 billion over the next decade, more than 10 times the sum Western countries allocate each year to the aid industry in the region.

One of the most plausible scenarios in response to calls by governments and politicians around the world to reduce or even eliminate dependence on oil is a relative decline in investment in additional production capacity in the oil producing countries.

Nor do they voice their concern that AFRICOM could be part of an American effort to exert control on West Africa s oil producing countries.

(v) The forced displacement of populations, in particular in areas surrounding the oilfields, and notes the invitation extended by the Government of the Sudan to the Special Rapporteur to visit the oil producing areas

For example, some oil producing countries ask their customers to pay in euros, but that does not mean that their oil is priced in euros.

Rents from oil production impede reforms in the major exporting countries.

The flow of net export earnings from the oil producers and others into euros will push up the value of the euro and enable the transfer of funds to occur.

More food can be grown, reducing dependency on other countries for food.

Meanwhile, restive armed youth in the oil producing delta, Jonathan s native region, are waiting to see what dividends our son will bring to his long neglected home.

Most encouraging is that producing countries themselves are beginning to seize the initiative.

Today, the plant is mostly grown in China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Mexico, Chile and India.

In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil producing countries aiming to support the price of oil.

It is not just that the US has become a debtor nation it is that large pools of capital and liquidity now reside in places like the Gulf region and China, with no sign of that trend reversing.