Business: OPEC Fails to Make a Fix

Confusion in Caracas gives opportunities to the cartel's customers

While Venezuelan air force helicopters whirred in the sky above and 5,000 soldiers patrolled on the ground below, armed motorcades wound through the clogged streets of Caracas. It was a typical Panavision entrance for the 13 oil ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The price-fixing cartel that had tiptoed onto the stage of international power politics a decade earlier was gathering amidst pomp, pageantry and supertight security to do what it had learned to do best: demand more money.

The members did just...

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