Thanks for Renaming OPEC
The cartel is getting its comeuppance
Source: OPEC
I asked yesterday how to rename OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, since only some petroleum-exporting countries still belong to the cartel. Here are some of the names I got in the comments and emails.
S.P.E.C.T.R.E. (The Saudi (and others) Petroleum Exporting Cartel with sidelines in Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion)
The Petroleum Cartel
TOE (tired old energy)
OPEC (Outfit Perpetually Extorting Consumers)
OuttaSPEC
The Cartoil
OPEGM (pronounced O PEG M: Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Greed Mongers)
Organization of Petroleum States
Oil R Us
OSPEC (Organization of Select Petroleum States)
opec (It should be called opec, all lower case.)
OFBT (Organization For a Barren Tomorrow)
The Vampire Cartel (credit to Neil Young, "I'm a vampire baby, sucking blood from the earth. I'm a vampire baby, I'll sell you twenty barrels worth." Vampire Blues, from the album On The Beach.)
PECR (pronounced pecker for petroleum exporting states reduced)
The Ostriches
OPEC Lite
MOGA (Make OPEC Great Again)
Baby Oil
DBOD! (Drill-Baby-OPEC-Drill!)
Some of these nominees are wretched. Some are pretty good though! I think for sheer elegance, I’d go with opec. The lower case says it all.
Some readers took the opportunity to go deep. Check the comments for a great back-and-forth between commenters Barbara and Robert Reagan about carbon taxes.
While we’re doing reader feedback: On April 13, I asked for your predictions of whether the Strait of Hormuz would be fully opened by the end of the month. Almost all of you said no, and you were right. Congratulations on your perspicacity.
Maybe it was the remarkably rapid electrification of transportation in China, France & South Korea that triggered the Trump/ BigOil&Gas gambit in Iran, baking-in new levels of higher fossil fuel prices for the foreseeable future. "Let's get ourselves a big fat price hike before the demand destruction over-takes us, and blame it all on Iran"!
Peter Coy wrote: "On April 13, I asked for your predictions of whether the Strait of Hormuz would be fully opened by the end of the month. Almost all of you said no, and you were right. Congratulations on your perspicacity."
Given Trump's limited understanding of his perceived enemies, I suspect it was fairly easy for those of us who think (not maga, in other words) to recognize that it would take a long time for the standoff to be resolved. Today, in a state with very low gas taxes, I paid almost $40 for 10.413 gallons of gas. Luckily, my car gets over 37 mpg if I drive gently. That's still over 1.5 times as much as I have paid in recent months, when gas was about $2.69/gal. Other stations here in SC offered gas at as much as $4.19.
Thanks also to Peter for recognizing the very nice conversation with Robert Regan about carbon tax.