d farmers protested for fuel prices, asking for subsidies from the government. The Greek government decreases every winter the tax of oil for central heating, to help households, but this year the price of oil is doubled comparing to last years price.OPEC at the beginning, denied to increase production, in order to cover the exceed demand, but finally increased production as much as the cartel’s price adjusted mechanism allowed. As this did not help, Greek government gave subsidies for central heating to the low income households. Although the subsidy given, this could not help much as journalists estimate. Then again a crisis in Middle East, between Israel and Palestine gave a new bust to the oil prices once again. United States and European countries trying to stop this oil crisis by using the oil stocks into the market but that didn’t help, either.According to Sloman at al (1997: p.p. 124-127), OPEC is probably one of the best-known cartels. A formal collusive agreement that has one purpose, to maximize industry’s profits. The interdependence of those countries make them to collude with each other and make them act as a monopoly. That way they avoid price and advertising competition which would have made the prices to fall and therefore make them lose profit. Every country produces a certain quota according to their total production or market share. The market leader country is Saudi Arabia which has the highest production of oil in the world. The cartel though, throughout the years could have invested in new technology to find new ways of oil refining so as to be more efficient and perhaps more profitable, has done nothing to achieve that. That would have led to lower prices for consumers and yet even more profits for these countries as demand would have increased. The price of oil is then determined by the cartel and affects not only consumers but the economies all over the world. Over the last years, the price of...
