ABSTRACT
The success of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the ability of the OPEC member countries to assert their own interests are salient features. It represents a shift in international power relations on a crucial dimension in favor of a group of raw material exporters that are developing countries. This has had a global impact on industrialized consumers of petroleum as well as oil-importing developing nations. As a function of OPEC's success, the non-OPEC exporters receive a higher price than previously for their petroleum, and their bargaining position with both the international oil industry and the importing nations has improved significantly. Some of the non-OPEC exporters are rich, industrialized countries, sharing important interests with the industrialized consumers of petroleum; others are poorer developing states, sharing important interests with others in the developing bloc. Consequently, these outsiders to OPEC have an ambiguous relationship to OPEC's success to the extent that their oil interests and their other economic interests as contradictory.
