The idea, like Pope’s OCAT, is to rely on friendly producers of the raw materials needed for the transition. For now, the push aims to re-draw supply chains for the energy transition and reduce China’s overwhelming dominance in critical minerals mining and processing. The idea appears to follow the model of the so-called friend-shoring push spearheaded by the United States in critical minerals.

That’s not a whole lot of responsible producers. This means the U.S., Canada, and Norway on the producing side and pretty much everyone but OPEC+ on the consuming side. Pope says it should be made up of “responsible oil producers and consumers”. The alternative to OPEC that Bloomberg’s Pope proposes is what he calls an Organization for Clean and Affordable Transportation.

Again, this wouldn’t be such bad news for sellers of oil, including the U.S., but it would certainly be bad news for buyers - again, including the U.S. Any oil becomes more expensive, really, when sanctions or tariffs are introduced on a third of the global supply. The other fact that Pope’s idea seems to ignore is that such punitive measures would essentially mean that OPEC+ oil would become more expensive for the countries that employ the measures. Related: Better-Than-Expected Inflation Data Sparks Hope For Oil Markets The message here seems to be along the lines of “That’ll show them,” but this message ignores the fact that first, Rosneft is already heavily sanctioned and cut off from Western financial markets, and second, Aramco is not exactly Chevron or Shell, and while it has recently tapped markets several times, it’s questionable whether it is so dependent on external finance that it would suffer any serious harm from such measures. could start punishing OPEC+ members by imposing fines, import tariffs, and even sanctions, as well as barring access to public financial markets to national oil companies such as Aramco and Rosneft. Again, the problems are too obvious to overlook.įor starters, Pope suggests that in case the NOPEC bill is successful, the U.S. One Bloomberg columnist, Carl Pope, recently detailed his vision of an anti-OPEC grouping, which manages to combine the idea of both affordable oil and a push for the electrification of transport. Some, however, have gone further than a bill.

The idea of an anti-OPEC buyers’ club has also resurfaced, and not just that, but a NOPEC bill has moved to the Senate in the United States and, according to media coverage, has a chance of passing. Yet it seems that some ideas tend to be so attractive that they resurface, again and again, in slightly different forms. The idea did not progress much further than the floating stage because one obvious problem could not be ignored: OPEC would retaliate.

Earlier this year, Italy’s then-PM Mario Draghi floated the idea of large oil buyers clubbing together and standing up to OPEC+.

Quite imposing plus 3