ABSTRACT
Direct political ties with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries were strongly limited by the political confrontation between the US and Middle East producers following the embargo of the US in 1973. The conflicts between international oil companies (IOCs) and OPEC governments also increased IOC interest in alternative oil provinces, benefitting the development of the UK and Norwegian parts of the North Sea and Alaska. In the first half of the 1980s, OPEC, and particularly Saudi Arabia, found stabilizing the market an increasingly costly matter. At the meeting in March 1982, the organization initiated a quota-sharing system among its members. Following the dramatic price fall in the autumn of 2014, new efforts to establish cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC producers emerged. OPEC’s economic interests in cooperation with Norway come from the fact that production limitations on the Norwegian Shelf will mean less oil on the market and consequently less competition for OPEC oil.
