Price of Crude Oil to Remain High.

This article presents information on crude oil prices. It is informed that oil prices went down between the period of mid-1996 and the end of 1998, then rose until September 2000. Oil stocks were low at the beginning of 2000, and so it was no surprise that prices remained high until the summer. But the sustained nature of the price rise was not expected because, following a number of production increases by organization of petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) in the second and third quarters of the year, much more crude oil was being produced than consumed. Many observers believed the fall in crude oil prices in 1997 and 1998 meant that OPEC had lost control over the oil markets. But the sharp price increase caused in 1999 by the relatively modest production restrictions imposed by OPEC showed that this was probably a premature conclusion. According to the most recent scenarios published by the International Energy Agency and the American Energy Information Administration, world oil consumption will increase substantially over the next 10 to 20 years if there is no fundamental change in energy policy with North America and the Asian developing countries accounting for a large part of the increase.