The Power of OPEC Plus: Understanding the Global Oil Market

OPEC plus is a group of 23 oil-exporting countries that meet regularly to decide how much crude oil to sell in the global market. This organization, formerly known as OPEC, was formed by five countries and has since expanded to include 13 more countries. Initially, OPEC produced 20 percent of the world's total oil in 2016, but through its agreements with other oil-producing countries, it now influences the global oil market balance and prices more than ever before.

One of the key factors that contribute to OPEC plus's significant influence is the amount of crude oil it produces. Together, the 23 member countries are responsible for producing 60 percent of the world's total oil. This level of control allows OPEC plus to shape the global oil market and make decisions that impact energy prices.

Crude Oil: The Lifeblood of the Global Economy

Crude oil is a fossil fuel that is found in geological formations and is formed from dead organisms that are buried under intense heat and pressure. Today, there are over 160 different types of crude oils traded in the global market. Oils are labeled based on their region and chemical makeup, which determines their quality and market value.

The weight of crude oil is measured in API gravity units, with lighter oils leading to less processing and producing a higher percentage of gasoline and diesel compared to heavier oils. Heavier oils, on the other hand, evaporate slowly and contain more material that will be used to make heavy products like asphalt and feedstock for plastics and petrochemicals.

Sweetness and Tan Count: Two Key Factors in Crude Oil Quality

Two additional factors that determine the quality of crude oil are its sweetness level and tan count. Sweetness refers to the amount of sulfur present in the oil, with levels below 0.5 percent considered sweet. Sour crude oils, on the other hand, require more processing and treating to remove the sulfur. Tan stands for total acid number, which measures the corrosiveness of the crude oil. The lower the tan count, the less corrosive the oil.

The Best Crude Oils: Light, Sweet, and Low Tan Count

The best crude oils are those that are light, sweet, and have a low tan count. These oils tend to be more expensive due to their high quality. West Texas Intermediate Oil (WTI), for example, is typically light and has a sulfur content of less than 0.24 percent, making it one of the highest-quality crude oils in the world.

Distilling and Cracking: The Process of Making Gasoline

The process of making gasoline from oil begins with distillation, where crude oil is heated to produce vapor. This vapor then rises through stacks and cools, turning back into a liquid. The liquid gets collected and separated by weight, with lighter and medium-weight liquids requiring less processing before they're ready for use in cars and trucks.

Heavier oils, on the other hand, take longer to process due to their long chains of carbon and hydrogen molecules. To make these heavier oils more useful, a process called cracking is used. This involves breaking or cracking the molecules into smaller chains using a catalyst. The resulting product is naptha, which can be reformatted into reusable gasoline-like molecules.

Blending and Treating: Producing Cleaner Gasoline

Another critical step in producing gasoline is blending, where different refinery products are mixed to create finished gasoline. Additionally, treating is an essential process that removes impurities like sulfur from gasoline molecules using a special catalyst. This chemical reaction strips away the sulfur, which can be used as fertilizer and in pharmaceuticals.

The Price of Gas: How Much Will it Get?

As for the price of gas in your city, it's difficult to predict exactly how high prices will get this year. However, with OPEC plus's significant influence on the global oil market, energy prices are likely to remain volatile. By understanding the factors that contribute to crude oil quality and production levels, you can better navigate the complex world of global energy markets.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enright now as of the recording of this video the average price of retail gasoline is 3.59 cents a gallon it's a huge relief from last Summer's nightmare when gas prices were more than a dollar higher near five dollars a gallon but here's the thing if you look at this from January to now retail gas prices have been steadily rising and a recent poll shows that 45 percent of Americans are either very concerned or extremely concerned about Rising gas prices today we're talking about what's happening with gas prices and what we can expect this summer we'll also talk about why some countries are able to get cheaper gas and why the oil industry in Venezuela collapsed also there's a big myth that the largest producer of crude oil in the world it's a country in the Middle East but that's dead wrong believe it or not the largest producer is the U.S we'll talk more about what that even means and I'll also give you a glimpse of who holds the best quality crude oil in the world the answer might surprise you in the 1930s the average gas price per gallon in the states never went beyond 20 cents a gallon by the 1950s we hit the 30-cent mark and it stayed that way for about 20 years so much for inflation but then in the 1970s the Western world including the U.S Canada Western Europe Australia New Zealand saw the energy crisis I'm talking about substantial petroleum shortages and elevated prices in fact prices per barrel skyrocketed from three bucks to twelve dollars pretty much Americans saw gas prices rise from 30 cents a gallon to 86 cents as many of us can recall there was a huge Global recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the 1970s unemployment went from 5.1 percent to nine percent and by 1982 unemployment hit 10.8 percent that was the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression gas prices shot up to a buck 31 a gallon for the most part the 2000 saw a steady rise in gas prices by the summer 2019 just before the pandemic average gas price in the US was around two dollars in 70 cents the pandemic caused gas prices to take a nosedive and the national average crashed below two dollars but we survived the pandemic and right now the average price is almost a dollar more than pre-pandemic levels but here's the thing compared to decades ago modern cars are a lot more fuel efficient but regardless of how fuel efficients your car is it doesn't make paying almost four bucks a gallon any less painful anyway analysts forecast the prices will rise steadily this summer due to Summertime surge but it shouldn't Peak to last year's crazy high that's assuming of course we don't have a major downturn in the world seen with a situation in Ukraine another wild car like a hurricane if you've traveled outside the country you already know there's a huge price disparity in gas prices depending on the country various factors impact that of course but a huge part of it comes down to one thing taxes every country has its unique tax on gas some countries tax it highly worth others don't tax it as much here's something that surprises many people the countries with the biggest crude oil reserves aren't necessary the world's largest producers of oil and vice versa believe it or not the US is the largest producer of oil we also consume the most oil in the world yeah we don't have the largest reserve here in the U.S we hauled just under 36 billion barrels if you count condensate reserves separately based on our estimated daily consumption rate of 19.11 million barrels per day 36 billion barrels of oil would last us just over five years but if you were to include condensate reserves an account that estimate is almost double between 68 to 74 billion barrels let's put this in context Russia has about twice the reserve as the U.S about 80 billion barrels it's the third largest producer of oil in the world producing some nine points four billion barrels including condensates the United Arab Emirates are UAE hold nearly 50 more in reserves than Russia I'm talking 111 billion barrels of crude oil in its reserve on average it transports 2.7 million barrels of oil every single day Canada has an even larger reserve of 171 billion barrels and it's the fourth largest oil producer in the world if you had the uaees reserve in Canada's Reserve pretty much that's the amount of Reserve that Saudi Arabia has which is 267 billion barrels back in 2021 Saudi Arabia was producing just over 9 million barrels daily in 2022 it grew to 11.5 million barrels by 2027 Saudi Arabia hopes to produce 13 million barrels a day right now Saudi Arabia is the second largest oil producer globally now the older the world's largest reserve is also one of the most troubled countries in the world I'm talking about Venezuela it holds over 300 billion barrels you think that having the world's largest oil Reserve means you'd be one of the biggest oil producers but actually that's not the case for Venezuela last year the country produced only six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand million barrels daily reason for this is due to U.S sanctions the current economic crisis in Venezuela and also internal corruption all of which makes it difficult for Venezuela to export and capitalize on its Rich reserves in fact not only is Venezuela not exporting as much but worse yet its own people have experienced fuel shortages multiple times and in fact at times the country has had to import oil but it wasn't always this way in the 1940s Venezuela was the third largest producer of crude oil in the world and by the 1990s and early 2000s Venezuela was flourishing but then the first major oil price slump hit the Venezuelan economy and it hit hard before the country even had a chance to recover it got hit multiple times by U.S sanctions which made things worse Hugo Chavez became the president of Venezuela in the late 90s and everything changed in 2002 Chavez tries to seize control of the oil company petroleum Venezuela or pdvsa the employees didn't want to go down easy and they staged huge strike Strike Back Chavez fired 19 000 Oil Workers and that included a whopping 80 percent of the country's top Engineers this is one of the biggest factors why the oil situation is so bad in Venezuela by the way with the military coup attempt and the chaos Chavez became convinced that the U.S was behind the whole plot so he caught any links Venezuela shared with the U.S including the oil industry and he enacted a policy agenda which he called socialism for the 21st century this turned Venezuela from one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America to a state of humanitarian and geopolitical crisis Chavez rewrote the Constitution restricted freedom of the press nationalized over a thousand private companies and destroyed the national currency with hyperinflation by 2014 Venezuela started rationing out gas to its own people part of the reason was because it subsidized domestic gas which was being smuggled to Colombia for higher prices by 2017 things got so bad that Venezuela the country with the largest oil reserves in the world had to start importing gas from other countries but let's talk about Big Oil did you know that at the beginning of the 20th century that America had five oil Giants Standard Oil of California Gulf oil Texaco Jersey standard and standard oil of New York the first three would later end up becoming Chevron and the last two would later become Exxon Mobil at that time besides the five major American companies there were the two big oil Giants in the world and both are British the British Royal Dutch Shell which today is known as shell an anglo-persian oil company which eventually became BP a British Petroleum last year Joe bidens visited Saudi Arabia trying to convince the prince to produce more oil discussions failed Ennis Federal operations Rose and the countries that made up OPEC cut their oil production the organization for the petroleum exporting countries Plus or OPEC plus is a group of 23 oil exporting countries that meet regularly to decide how much crude oil to sell in the World Market initially OPEC was a group of five countries that expanded 13. It produced 20 percent of the world's total oil in 2016 OPEC signed an agreement with 10 of other oil producing countries to create what is now called OPEC plus together the 23 countries are responsible for producing 60 percent of the world's total oil OPEC plus now influences Global oil Market balances and oil prices more than ever before in a way it's like legalized price fixing the group is so powerful that multiple reporters have asked are you using energy as a weapon of course OPEC plus denies these allegations we are not endangering the energy Market we are providing security stability to the energy market now let's talk about the best crude oil crude oil is a fossil fuel and black liquid found in geological formations it's formed from dead organisms that are buried under intense heat and pressure today there are over 160 different crude oils traded in the market oils are labeled based on region and chemical makeup which in turn defines the quality of oil and therefore the market value first factor is weight light oil leads less processing and produces a higher percentage of gasoline and Diesel compared to heavy oil on the other hand heavy oil evaporates slowly it contains material that will be used to make heavy products like asphalt and feedstock for Plastics and petrochemical oil weight is measured in API gravity units which measure the density of oil the lighter the oil the higher the API then there's sweetness the amount of sulfur determines whether it gets labeled as sweet or sour sweet crude is a crude oil with very low levels of sulfur less than 0.5 percent anything above 0.5 percent is considered sour sour ore requires more processing and treating in order to remove the sulfur that is why sweeter oil holds more market value and lastly there's the tan count tan stands for total acid number pretty much this tells you how corrosive the crude oil is the smaller the tan number the less corrosive it is normally lighter oils have a lower hand than heavier oils the best oils are the one that are light sweet and less gross in other words the one with a high API sulfur content less than 0.5 percent and low tan count needless to say crude oil with these characteristics tend to be more expensive when you consider these key characteristics we see either some of the best oil is produced right here in the U.S West Texas intermediate oil or WTI is typically light and only has a sulfur content of less than 0.24 there's also Brent oil that comes from the Scottish Brent and ninian systems located in an RC brand oil is also white and sweet oil from OPEC country tends to include seven different crude oils typically OPEC oil is heavy and sour ever wonder how we make gas from oil the whole process starts with what's caused distilling and oil gets superheated it becomes a vapor The Vapor then goes through a distillation unit and as Rises and cools the vapor turns back into a liquid using Stacks The Vapor then goes into the distillation unit it rises and cools The Vapor turned into a liquid using stacks of trays the liquid gets easily collected and separated by weight lighter and medium weight liquids don't need as much processing before they're ready to be used in cars and trucks heavier liquids on the other hand take longer to process to make heavy oil as useful as possible there's a process called cracking basically heavy oil has long strings of carbon and hydrogen molecules by using a catalyst these molecules can be broken or cracked into smaller chains this makes the heavier liquid lighter and more valuable one of the products that gets separated in this distilling product is a liquid that's called naptha the number of carbon atoms and that does around the same as in gasoline the difference is that the structure is more complex because of this reforming the nap the molecule gets rearranged and turned into reusable gasoline-like molecule next up there's the blending process what this means is mixing a bunch of different Refinery products to create finished gasoline another process is called treating treating is important to produce cleaner gasoline and protect our health and environment the thing about gasoline molecules is that they contain impurities like sulfur but once the molecules are heated and come in contact with a special Catalyst chemical reaction occurs this reaction removes and strips away the sulfur the sulfur compounds are then used as fertilizer and in Pharmaceuticals but now you tell me what's the price of gas in your city and how high do you think prices will get this year please share by commenting below if you like this video please like share and subscribe thanks for your supportright now as of the recording of this video the average price of retail gasoline is 3.59 cents a gallon it's a huge relief from last Summer's nightmare when gas prices were more than a dollar higher near five dollars a gallon but here's the thing if you look at this from January to now retail gas prices have been steadily rising and a recent poll shows that 45 percent of Americans are either very concerned or extremely concerned about Rising gas prices today we're talking about what's happening with gas prices and what we can expect this summer we'll also talk about why some countries are able to get cheaper gas and why the oil industry in Venezuela collapsed also there's a big myth that the largest producer of crude oil in the world it's a country in the Middle East but that's dead wrong believe it or not the largest producer is the U.S we'll talk more about what that even means and I'll also give you a glimpse of who holds the best quality crude oil in the world the answer might surprise you in the 1930s the average gas price per gallon in the states never went beyond 20 cents a gallon by the 1950s we hit the 30-cent mark and it stayed that way for about 20 years so much for inflation but then in the 1970s the Western world including the U.S Canada Western Europe Australia New Zealand saw the energy crisis I'm talking about substantial petroleum shortages and elevated prices in fact prices per barrel skyrocketed from three bucks to twelve dollars pretty much Americans saw gas prices rise from 30 cents a gallon to 86 cents as many of us can recall there was a huge Global recession in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the 1970s unemployment went from 5.1 percent to nine percent and by 1982 unemployment hit 10.8 percent that was the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression gas prices shot up to a buck 31 a gallon for the most part the 2000 saw a steady rise in gas prices by the summer 2019 just before the pandemic average gas price in the US was around two dollars in 70 cents the pandemic caused gas prices to take a nosedive and the national average crashed below two dollars but we survived the pandemic and right now the average price is almost a dollar more than pre-pandemic levels but here's the thing compared to decades ago modern cars are a lot more fuel efficient but regardless of how fuel efficients your car is it doesn't make paying almost four bucks a gallon any less painful anyway analysts forecast the prices will rise steadily this summer due to Summertime surge but it shouldn't Peak to last year's crazy high that's assuming of course we don't have a major downturn in the world seen with a situation in Ukraine another wild car like a hurricane if you've traveled outside the country you already know there's a huge price disparity in gas prices depending on the country various factors impact that of course but a huge part of it comes down to one thing taxes every country has its unique tax on gas some countries tax it highly worth others don't tax it as much here's something that surprises many people the countries with the biggest crude oil reserves aren't necessary the world's largest producers of oil and vice versa believe it or not the US is the largest producer of oil we also consume the most oil in the world yeah we don't have the largest reserve here in the U.S we hauled just under 36 billion barrels if you count condensate reserves separately based on our estimated daily consumption rate of 19.11 million barrels per day 36 billion barrels of oil would last us just over five years but if you were to include condensate reserves an account that estimate is almost double between 68 to 74 billion barrels let's put this in context Russia has about twice the reserve as the U.S about 80 billion barrels it's the third largest producer of oil in the world producing some nine points four billion barrels including condensates the United Arab Emirates are UAE hold nearly 50 more in reserves than Russia I'm talking 111 billion barrels of crude oil in its reserve on average it transports 2.7 million barrels of oil every single day Canada has an even larger reserve of 171 billion barrels and it's the fourth largest oil producer in the world if you had the uaees reserve in Canada's Reserve pretty much that's the amount of Reserve that Saudi Arabia has which is 267 billion barrels back in 2021 Saudi Arabia was producing just over 9 million barrels daily in 2022 it grew to 11.5 million barrels by 2027 Saudi Arabia hopes to produce 13 million barrels a day right now Saudi Arabia is the second largest oil producer globally now the older the world's largest reserve is also one of the most troubled countries in the world I'm talking about Venezuela it holds over 300 billion barrels you think that having the world's largest oil Reserve means you'd be one of the biggest oil producers but actually that's not the case for Venezuela last year the country produced only six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand million barrels daily reason for this is due to U.S sanctions the current economic crisis in Venezuela and also internal corruption all of which makes it difficult for Venezuela to export and capitalize on its Rich reserves in fact not only is Venezuela not exporting as much but worse yet its own people have experienced fuel shortages multiple times and in fact at times the country has had to import oil but it wasn't always this way in the 1940s Venezuela was the third largest producer of crude oil in the world and by the 1990s and early 2000s Venezuela was flourishing but then the first major oil price slump hit the Venezuelan economy and it hit hard before the country even had a chance to recover it got hit multiple times by U.S sanctions which made things worse Hugo Chavez became the president of Venezuela in the late 90s and everything changed in 2002 Chavez tries to seize control of the oil company petroleum Venezuela or pdvsa the employees didn't want to go down easy and they staged huge strike Strike Back Chavez fired 19 000 Oil Workers and that included a whopping 80 percent of the country's top Engineers this is one of the biggest factors why the oil situation is so bad in Venezuela by the way with the military coup attempt and the chaos Chavez became convinced that the U.S was behind the whole plot so he caught any links Venezuela shared with the U.S including the oil industry and he enacted a policy agenda which he called socialism for the 21st century this turned Venezuela from one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America to a state of humanitarian and geopolitical crisis Chavez rewrote the Constitution restricted freedom of the press nationalized over a thousand private companies and destroyed the national currency with hyperinflation by 2014 Venezuela started rationing out gas to its own people part of the reason was because it subsidized domestic gas which was being smuggled to Colombia for higher prices by 2017 things got so bad that Venezuela the country with the largest oil reserves in the world had to start importing gas from other countries but let's talk about Big Oil did you know that at the beginning of the 20th century that America had five oil Giants Standard Oil of California Gulf oil Texaco Jersey standard and standard oil of New York the first three would later end up becoming Chevron and the last two would later become Exxon Mobil at that time besides the five major American companies there were the two big oil Giants in the world and both are British the British Royal Dutch Shell which today is known as shell an anglo-persian oil company which eventually became BP a British Petroleum last year Joe bidens visited Saudi Arabia trying to convince the prince to produce more oil discussions failed Ennis Federal operations Rose and the countries that made up OPEC cut their oil production the organization for the petroleum exporting countries Plus or OPEC plus is a group of 23 oil exporting countries that meet regularly to decide how much crude oil to sell in the World Market initially OPEC was a group of five countries that expanded 13. It produced 20 percent of the world's total oil in 2016 OPEC signed an agreement with 10 of other oil producing countries to create what is now called OPEC plus together the 23 countries are responsible for producing 60 percent of the world's total oil OPEC plus now influences Global oil Market balances and oil prices more than ever before in a way it's like legalized price fixing the group is so powerful that multiple reporters have asked are you using energy as a weapon of course OPEC plus denies these allegations we are not endangering the energy Market we are providing security stability to the energy market now let's talk about the best crude oil crude oil is a fossil fuel and black liquid found in geological formations it's formed from dead organisms that are buried under intense heat and pressure today there are over 160 different crude oils traded in the market oils are labeled based on region and chemical makeup which in turn defines the quality of oil and therefore the market value first factor is weight light oil leads less processing and produces a higher percentage of gasoline and Diesel compared to heavy oil on the other hand heavy oil evaporates slowly it contains material that will be used to make heavy products like asphalt and feedstock for Plastics and petrochemical oil weight is measured in API gravity units which measure the density of oil the lighter the oil the higher the API then there's sweetness the amount of sulfur determines whether it gets labeled as sweet or sour sweet crude is a crude oil with very low levels of sulfur less than 0.5 percent anything above 0.5 percent is considered sour sour ore requires more processing and treating in order to remove the sulfur that is why sweeter oil holds more market value and lastly there's the tan count tan stands for total acid number pretty much this tells you how corrosive the crude oil is the smaller the tan number the less corrosive it is normally lighter oils have a lower hand than heavier oils the best oils are the one that are light sweet and less gross in other words the one with a high API sulfur content less than 0.5 percent and low tan count needless to say crude oil with these characteristics tend to be more expensive when you consider these key characteristics we see either some of the best oil is produced right here in the U.S West Texas intermediate oil or WTI is typically light and only has a sulfur content of less than 0.24 there's also Brent oil that comes from the Scottish Brent and ninian systems located in an RC brand oil is also white and sweet oil from OPEC country tends to include seven different crude oils typically OPEC oil is heavy and sour ever wonder how we make gas from oil the whole process starts with what's caused distilling and oil gets superheated it becomes a vapor The Vapor then goes through a distillation unit and as Rises and cools the vapor turns back into a liquid using Stacks The Vapor then goes into the distillation unit it rises and cools The Vapor turned into a liquid using stacks of trays the liquid gets easily collected and separated by weight lighter and medium weight liquids don't need as much processing before they're ready to be used in cars and trucks heavier liquids on the other hand take longer to process to make heavy oil as useful as possible there's a process called cracking basically heavy oil has long strings of carbon and hydrogen molecules by using a catalyst these molecules can be broken or cracked into smaller chains this makes the heavier liquid lighter and more valuable one of the products that gets separated in this distilling product is a liquid that's called naptha the number of carbon atoms and that does around the same as in gasoline the difference is that the structure is more complex because of this reforming the nap the molecule gets rearranged and turned into reusable gasoline-like molecule next up there's the blending process what this means is mixing a bunch of different Refinery products to create finished gasoline another process is called treating treating is important to produce cleaner gasoline and protect our health and environment the thing about gasoline molecules is that they contain impurities like sulfur but once the molecules are heated and come in contact with a special Catalyst chemical reaction occurs this reaction removes and strips away the sulfur the sulfur compounds are then used as fertilizer and in Pharmaceuticals but now you tell me what's the price of gas in your city and how high do you think prices will get this year please share by commenting below if you like this video please like share and subscribe thanks for your support\n"