[hinkley]

You might sum it up as:

These countries weather boom/bust cycles in oil prices, waiting for a 'someday' to refill their coffers, and every year there are more and more things trying to put off 'someday' a little longer.

Essentially these countries have an antagonistic relationship with the rest of the world, as do quite a few corporations really. If you only get good news when everyone else gets bad news, then you've made an enemy of your customers. They just might know it yet. Lots of them will be working in an uncoordinated fashion to make their bad news a little better, making your good news worse and worse.

Once word gets around they'll start teaming up.

[ogre_codes]

> Once word gets around they'll start teaming up.

They were able to do this fairly successfully until shale oil and spoiled their intermittently successful collusion.

[bluGill]

They were only able to do it because Saudi Arriba was willing to take almost all of the cuts required. In the 1970s opec vot better compliance, but cartels tend to fail because it is the benifit of the individual to defect while everyone else makes cuts. Saudi Arriba is not able to make deep enough cuts alone though, and it is hard to see anyone else making them.

[hinkley]

I've always wondered how much black market petroleum is state sanctioned. Unofficially, of course.