The March 6 Business section of The Daily Sentinel published a picture of a meeting room with two long lines of conference tables facing each other. Seated at these tables were the thirteen ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the organization I believe to be the most responsible, other than our own professional politicians, for the recession we and the world are deeper into each day.
The frankly acknowledged purpose of this organization is to control the price of fuel worldwide. This purpose is obviously intended for the greedy benefit of a relative few and to defeat the normal effects of a competitive free market. To date they have no discernable opposing organization.
Of course, because of the worldwide effect of OPEC’s greedy purpose, this opposition should be within the stated intent of the United Nations, but I think we would find that the countries here are also members of that austere group. So it appears that probably the only organization with the stature to effectively oppose the greedy purposes of OPEC is the U.S. of A.
We are said to be some 40 percent of the world petroleum market. What do you think might be the results of our announcing on the UN floor that we would embargo all crude oil costing more than $25 a barrel and were organizing an emergency rationing structure plus a build-up of independent (non-Big Oil) refining capability, diverting all Alaskan oil to the lower 48 only, and opening the Alaskan reserves?
At the same time, we should open a college and consumer-group staffed (no Professional Politicians or Big Oil ‘experts’) investigation into possible Big Oil and U.S. political relationships with OPEC.

RAY LASHLEY
Grand Junction

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