Tous droits réservés © HEC Montréal, 1976 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. The stability of OPEC may be defined as the upholding of a high level of cohesion between the members of this organisation, in order to secure for the whole a certain level of bargaining power that everyone would think to be acceptable at a given time and in a given context. This level of cohesion is mainly estimated by the common will of members to apply rigorously a common strategy regarding the price-quantity of crude petroleum. In the long run, such a strategy would call for a common production plan in order to determine not only the total level of annual production, but also the quotas of each country, the price level and the rate of development of the capacity of production.The aim of this paper is to contribute to the bringing out of a problematic regarding such a production plan as a whole. The main topics are: (1) the necessity of OPEC, (2) the price determination of petroleum, (3) the question of the instability of a coalition. The analysis accounts for the fact that the petroleum sector produces a non-renewable resource, on the one hand, and for the environment and international constraints that the member countries of OPEC have to face in their development process, on the other hand.

Tous droits réservés © Études internationales, 1976 Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne.

Current surplus oil production capacity had its origins in the price increases of the 1970s. Those increases encouraged both energy conservation and the entry of new producers. Recent increases in oil demand reflect the belief among energy users that in real terms in the long term, prices will be stable. There is good reason to believe that this will be so, even at the current rate of increase it will be 15 years before demand matches current capacity. Given that situation it is difficult to see OPEC following any other pricing policy than the one currently in place. In the meantime market prices will further encourage vertical integration.

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What is the appropriate economic policy for primary commodity producing developing countries given that industrialized countries are specialized in the production of technological progress? Integrating the concept of product life cycle to the static theory of comparative advantage, Harry Johnson has argued that free trade will, by spreading the technology, dissolve the monopoly in technology, and thus constitutes the only policy capable of transmitting growth from one country to another. This article criticizes this thesis on the following points: 1) A rigorous interpretation of the concept of product life cycle and of the underlying assumptions suggests that only industrialized countries present the necessary conditions for the location of the production of exportable technological progress. 2) It follows that the monopoly of the industrialized countries is not temporary but dynamic and self renewing. 3) Free trade, in this case, will only reinforce the negative effects of this monopoly on international specialization and, therefore, reinforce the disparities between industrialized and developing countries. Given the absence of a supranational authority which could intervene against this monopoly, it is appropriate to consider the limits of the bilateral monopoly policy which the developing countries will apply, based on their primary commodities, and the role that OPEC can play in this context