Fifty years ago, the Western oil companies from countries such as the United States, the Netherlands and Britain were paying the oil producing countries less than two dollars per barrel of oil. Today, as OPEC will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary and hold its regular ministerial meeting in Vienna tomorrow (Thursday), one must recall the achievements of the producing countries with the inception of OPEC, which enabled these countries to achieve the current price range of 75-81 dollars per barrel. There is no doubt that there is a vast difference between having an organization that defends the interests of its peoples, and having companies that exploit the natural resources of these countries. The latter have succeeded in creating an organization that can be said to have reached maturity after going through many pitfalls and political problems, pitfalls that this organization has managed in overcoming in order to defend its interests. Since the year 2000 and specifically since OPEC's summit in Venezuela, the organization's ministers, on behalf of the monarchs and heads of states of its member countries, pledged to keep political issues away from their work, and this is an achievement that the Arab citizen almost cannot believe has happened. Over the past ten years, and despite the existing state of war between the two member states Iraq and Iran, and then the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime in the wake of the U.S.-led war, OPEC continued to operate in spite of all these conflicts. This is because, as a prominent minister in the organization told Al-Hayat, “the interests of all these countries have superseded these issues”. Were it not for the fact that the producing countries succeeded in managing their production, OPEC would not have gained revenues at the level it requires. As to what OPEC does with these revenues, the disparities and differences in policies in this regard are a completely different matter. For despite the presence of rogue regimes in Venezuela, Iran and Libya, the organization was able to withstand and overcome the political pitfalls that it has encountered. Naturally, there is disagreement regarding the achievements of OPEC. There are those who benefited from these achievements and developed infrastructure in their countries and improved the standard of living of their peoples, while there were those who used oil revenues as a tool to spread their revolutions at the expense of the interests of a people that continued to live in misery and poverty, making some wish that such regimes did not have such oil revenues. There is also no doubt that the establishment of OPEC is a milestone event in the history of developing nations. Today, the advanced level of OPEC's operations highlights the mature rationale of the representatives of OPEC member states, who are keen on preserving their interests despite the differences in their policies. The two most senior ministers in the organization, the Saudi minister Ali Naimi, and the Qatari Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Attiyah, played a key role in this direction. It was not easy to keep political disputes away from the organization's deliberations. However, those who have been closely following up the organization's work since 1977 can say that everything has changed in OPEC. In the past, conferences used to last days and even weeks in the hotels of Geneva or even London. For example, recall that once, OPEC's ministerial session convened at the Intercontinental Hotel in London for ten days. Today, a meeting cannot last more than one day. However, the only thing that has not changed is the attention given by the global media to the comments of the Saudi oil minister, as the various media outlets distribute the reactions of the representative of the world's largest oil producer to the markets; these then exhibit a major influence on global oil markets. Next week, Saudi Arabia will host a seminar to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of OPEC, to be inaugurated by Minister Ali Naimi, and attended by the senior executives of several international oil companies and energy experts. OPEC has succeeded in protecting the organization's interests and the resources of its member states, and also in issuing reports on the global economy, production and the markets. OPEC is in the process of organizing more seminars where dialogue between producers and consumers has become indispensable, since it has contributed to better understanding (albeit it still suffers from some shortcomings, especially when it comes to the major consuming countries that frequently attempt to put pressure on OPEC). Those who have for a long time witnessed the work of the organization, could never forget how the American Secretary of Energy once attempted to contact the head of OPEC during the conference to ask him not to cut production; however, he soon saw that the decisions taken by the conference ran contrary to his demands.
