ABSTRACT
A change such as indicated in Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil production, development and foreign investment policy, would obviously take place gradually and also would not apply with equal force to all of the OPEC countries. The period of declining real prices for oil is coming to an end, and may, within the not too distant future, be followed by an accelerating increase in real prices, with the timing dependent on the oil supply/demand relationship. Three fields of special interest to the producing countries are forward integration from crude-oil production into refining, producing at least commodity petrochemicals for export, and tanker transportation. Saudi Arabia and a few other producers have sufficient reserves to give them ample time for slow adjustments to the post-oil period, and they can absorb a large amount of an at least partially inevitable waste of their financial endowment.
