OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, founded in Baghdad in 1960 by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. It influences oil…
Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela met at the Baghdad Conference on 10-14 September 1960 and created OPEC after Western oil majors cut the posted price of cr…
After the Yom Kippur War began, Arab producers cut output and embargoed exports to the United States and others seen as supporting Israel. Benchmark crude roughly quadru…
The Iranian Revolution cut Iran’s exports sharply, and the 1980 Iran-Iraq war removed more barrels. Prices climbed from roughly $14 to around $35 a barrel within about t…
New non-OPEC supply and conservation left OPEC defending prices by cutting its own output, with Saudi Arabia absorbing most of the pain. In late 1985 Riyadh opened the t…
Amid a commodities boom and tight spare capacity, Brent and WTI peaked at roughly $147 a barrel in July 2008, then collapsed toward $40 by December as the financial cris…
On 27 November 2014, with the market oversupplied, OPEC decided not to cut production, a move widely read as an attempt to squeeze higher-cost U.S. shale. Prices fell fr…
On 10 December 2016 OPEC agreed coordinated cuts of about 1.8 million barrels a day with 10 non-OPEC producers, including Russia, effective January 2017. The bloc became…
A March 2020 Saudi-Russia price war collided with the pandemic. On 20 April 2020 the expiring U.S. WTI futures contract settled at minus $37.63 a barrel as storage fille…
Russia’s 2022 invasion pushed Brent above $120 a barrel, brought Western sanctions and a G7 price cap on Russian crude, and redirected Russian oil from Europe to India a…
During a US-Israel campaign against Iran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard announced on 2 March 2026 it was closing the Strait of Hormuz to US and Israel-linked shipping; Bren…
Read the complete story, FAQs and key facts.