IN the midst of the blizzard of news surrounding the visit of Britain’s king to the US (or, to be more accurate, to the malevolent White House clown) and the ongoing crisis in British politics, the departure of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Opec went largely unnoticed.

Ah, you say, and why wouldn’t it? What’s it got to do with me?

The answer at the moment is nothing, but in the coming months, maybe by the autumn, quite a lot.

Opec is the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Founded in 1960, it comprised five countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela. Now there are 11.

Many are poor states like Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Congo. It’s in their economic interest to come together to fix oil prices.

Until the advent of Opec, big European companies largely controlled the price of Gulf oil.

What Opec did was control production and raise prices by allocating certain numbers of barrels to each member.

They didn’t really begin to flex their muscles until the 1970s, notably in the first ‘oil shock’ in 1973.

Then, in response to the Yom Kippur war and the assistance the US and European states gave to Israel, Opec cut off supplies, particularly to Britain and the Netherlands, headquarters of major oil........

© The Irish News