Obidozie A.A. Okeke

By this author

Nigeria and OPEC: evolution of relations

Issue 11 from 05.12.2018

For about a century oil has been used as a weapon in international relations. The article attempts to evaluate Nigeria’s role as an OPEC member and its relationship with this organization. The country’s membership in OPEC has had a far reaching impact on both the international political economy of oil and Nigeria’s development efforts.  Many factors combined to destine Nigeria to play a major role in the international oil industry and ensured that major oil consuming and producing countries would directly and indirectly influence the country’s internal politics and its international relations. Nigeria is located in the Atlantic Basin, closer to the United States and Europe than the Middle East, which boasts of most of the global oil producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. An important advantage for the Nigerian oil industry is the quality of its sulphur free crude. This factor explains why Nigeria has on several occasions played a major role in the global oil market. The development of the Nigerian oil industry, however, has gone through phases, each of which has been influenced by the country’s internal political dynamics, the role of major actors in OPEC and the general global political and economic situations.  Although Nigeria has never been directly involved in any major conflicts in the Middle East, which in most cases involved other OPEC member countries, it has not been insulated from their outcomes. Conflicts involving member countries of OPEC, such as the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and the Iraqi invasion Kuwait on August 2, 1990, had the effect of paralyzing the organization, inducing mutual destruction of oil facilities of belligerents and distorting prices of oil in the international market as operators reacted or scrambled for oil to guard against shortages

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