Organizácia krajín vyvážajúcich ropu – 40 rokov existencie
ORGANISATION OF PETROLEUM EXPORTING COUNTRIES – 40 YEARS OF EXISTENCE

Summary/Abstract: Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad, Iraq on 10th – 14th of September 1960. The five founder members were Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. During the next decade they were joint by all of the current mem-bers Algeria, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In the first decade of its existence, OPEC created all of its important bodies, most important being the Conference of Oil ministers, which meets twice a year (in March and September). There are also extraordinary meetings of the Conference in case of any unexpected situation that can happen on the oil market. The governments of member countries founded national oil companies and tried to move the price making policy and oil mining under these companies instead of the dominating seven sisters (Mobil, Texa-co, Exxon, Chevron, Gulf, British Petroleum a Royal Dutch/Shell). One of the most important factors of dominant position of seven sisters (five of them were American companies) was high ratio of the USA both on mining and on production of oil in the first half of 20th century. In the seventies OPEC substantially changed the global environment by increasing the oil prices from 1.5 USD/barrel to almost 15 USD/barrel in 1975 and over 30 USD/ barrel in the 1979 – 1980. These oil shocks had a great impact on the nations all over the world. There was an essential change in territorial and commodity structure of interna-tional trade. Oil shocks also accelerated the research and development and application of its results. There were various economical and political reasons that led to the oil shocks. First of all, the unbalance between oil supply and demand on the world oil market (de-mand exceeded the production capacity of all oil producing countries). Second, the oil price was underestimated for a very long time (and cheap energy supplies made the world economy significantly dependent on the energy supplies such as oil). Third, there was a fear in OPEC member countries of depletion of their oil reserves. Main political reasons were the Yom-Kippur War in 1973, Islamic Revolution in Iran, and Gulf War in 1991. Even though the high oil prices after two oil shocks raised oil revenues in OPEC member countries, they also gave rise to start the production in non-OPEC (NOPEC) countries. On 14th of April 1995 the UN Security Council adopted resolution 986, establishing the Oil-for-Food programme, providing Iraq with opportunity to sell oil to finance the purchase of humanitarian goods, and various mandated United Nations activities con-cerning Iraq. The programme is funded exclusively with proceeds from Iraqi oil exports, authorised by the Security Council. In the initial stages of the programme, Iraq was per-mitted to sell 2 billion USD worth of oil every six months, with two-thirds of that amount to be used to meet Iraq’s humanitarian needs. In 1998, the limit on the level of Iraqi oil exports under the programme

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