OPEC SAYS NO

Summer time is upon us. This is the time of the year that many families plan vacations. Families travel to destinations to relax, enjoy family time and get away from the daily grind.

With gas prices being what they have been for sometime, many families are not traveling as far. More families are not getting to see each other and more families are having staycations. This is where the family stays home or very close to home but finds different things to do other then the norm.

Now gas prices have dropped slightly in the last month or so. We, the public, were told we could expect the prices to continue to drop slowly.

Well that doesn't look like it will be happening. The price per barrel of oil just went up by $2 dollars a barrel yesterday. This sends the price back over the $100 dollar per barrel mark. The price per barrel had finally been under that $100 dollar mark for sometime, giving us hope it would continue to fall.

So what happened? OPEC, the oil cartel we have written about many times here, is what happened. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) just finished a week long meeting in Vienna. While during this meeting, the 12 member group could not, did not, and in my opinion had no intention to raise the production of their oil output. OPEC countries produce and supply 40 percent of the world's petroleum. This organization sets quotas, usually lower then what is needed worldwide, so in essence they set the price per barrel of oil. If they want a higher price per barrel the produce less, if the want a lower price per barrel the will increase their production. What this proves is that these countries, this monopoly of an organization, has more interest in creating high oil prices and increasing their wallet size then actually stabilizing energy markets.

U.S. oil supplies dropped by 4.8 million barrels last week, this is way above what government analysts expected. Now this local shortage wont last long, due to much of it came from a problem in the Midwest, where a pipeline from Canada was temporary shut down. That pipeline is back up and running and looking to expand which would also expand our oil and gas production. (Read our article Getting Away from Arab Oil.)

As we mentioned earlier, gasoline pump prices have dropped. The national average right now is $3.75 dollars per gallon. That price is $.21 cent cheaper than what gas prices where a month ago. That price is still over $1.00 dollar higher then what gas prices where a year ago.

So how will OPEC not raising their production affect us? Well it is estimated that without that raise in production we will see the price per barrel of oil rise to over $130 per barrel this year. That will in turn cause those pump prices to go back up to over $4 dollars per gallon, possibly even $5 dollars a gallon.

As we here have stated multiple times we need to depend less on these gangster style, cartel organizations like OPEC. With the pipeline from Canada set to expand and increase our own oil production, there is more good news coming our way. Exxon has recently made a new oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico. It has been reported that more then 700 million barrels of oil and oil equivalent could be produced from this. The president of Exxon has stated that this is one of the largest discoveries in Gulf drilling in the last 10 years.

So if OPEC doesn't want to produce more oil, fine. We have to and will continue to find our own resources and production. Hopefully at some point we, as a nation, will not depend on other countries to determine our prices. We will be able to control our own market. Hopefully.

How are gas prices affected you traveling? How do you feel about an organization with the ability to set world wide prices? What do yo think about a new oil discovery in the Gulf?

Tell us, agree or disagree at least we know what the PEOPLE think.