OIL PRODUCING COUNTRIES WRANGLE from Julian Atkinson
The Oil ond Gas Journel recently carried an article on the ¢cifferences among opmc (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). It ran:
MWhether internel differrences with OPEC are serious enough to indice ate a major rift remains to be seen, but they certainly getting a lot of attention. ‘The latest round of OPEC talks with operating oil coupanies broke down in Geneva last month when the OPEC team said that the companies! offer on expending royalties wasn't good enough. Almost immediately speculators began to speculate, It goes something like this:
Iran wents to settle for the companies! offer. Iraq wants to adopt a hard line and is trying to persuade OPEC members to take some unilateral action. Other OPEC members are somewhere betweene
"All the talk about a serious schism prompted Dr, Barezarz, an TIraqui and OPEC's new secretary genoral, to issue an official denial, Dr. Barczarz insisted that, “there may be slight differences of opinion on details, but there is no question of real dimgreenente" That statement was made just before Radio Bagdad quoted the Iraqui oil minister, A.A. Watari, as blaming western governments for the refusal of operating oilcompanies to raise oil prices. About the same time, Indonesia's No. 2 man, Chaerul Saleh, said in Djarkata that the companies are deliberately creating disunity in OPEC to benefit Iraneoe.?