HOW TO BUILD OUR RELATIONS WITH THE MOST INFLUENTIAL INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION Alexander KARPUSHIN, Head of Rosneft's Representative Office in Europe (Vienna) In two years, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the most influential international economic organization in the modern world, will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Its name is associated with important changes in the global oil market; it remains and, apparently, will remain for a long time the most important "energy carrier" for all mankind. OPEC's influence is not limited to the oil industry, as the dynamics of supply and demand for oil and petroleum products have a huge impact on almost all commodity markets. The contribution of OPEC member countries to global natural gas supplies is growing. For Russia, which is one of the world's leading energy powers, OPEC is both the closest ally, given the unity of interests in the implementation of export policy, and at the same time a competitor from which our country is forced to defend itself in order to maintain its position in the world market. Building proper, economically and politically sound relations with OPEC is one of the most important tasks of Russian diplomacy in the early twenty-first century. How is it solved? OPEC was established in September 1960 in Baghdad at a conference convened by five countries-Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. This was a time when the oil market was almost completely controlled by an International oil cartel formed by the world's largest oil corporations. At that time, few people could have imagined that OPEC would sharply limit the power of the all - powerful cartel in a few years, and then successfully encroach on the regulation of the world oil market and at the same time on the monopoly of the Western world on the right to dispose of oil reserves in its own interests. Of course, OPEC has benefited from the fact that in recent years demand for the main energy carrier has un ... Read more