We must bear in mind the need for stability in the long term, and this means harmony in upstream expansion, downstream facilities, and supply and demand, with clarity and consistency about future levels of demand, together with assurances of secure supply. This, in turn, requires prices that allow and attract investment and guarantee sufficient revenue both to the countries owning the oil resources and to investors so as to ensure the availability of money for reinvestment, as well as reasonable profits.

OPEC's introduction of a price band mechanism three years ago helps cater for such a need. At that time, OPEC identified US$22 to US$28 per barrel as the price range that balances the interests of consumers and producers. The mechanism is triggered once prices begin to settle outside the limits of the band. For us in OPEC, this mechanism constitutes a highly effective part of our market stabilization measures. It supports price stability, while encouraging investment in the industry. The success of the mechanism can be judged from the fact that, since its inception, the Basket has averaged just over US$25 per barrel, a value at the center of the band, and this has occurred during a period when there have been serious crises at both ends of the pricing spectrum.

Mining for Allies

However, the task of stabilizing the oil market and guaranteeing secure demand and supply with reasonable prices and fair returns to investors cannot be carried out by OPEC alone. Cooperation between OPEC and non-OPEC producers and between producers and consumers, as well as among energy companies and financial institutions, is vital. In recent years, OPEC has made great progress in enhancing cooperation. We have welcomed the attendance of many leading non-OPEC producers as observers at our Ministerial Conferences, as well as the fruitful dialogue we have shared with them on these and other occasions, just as we have been gratified to note the major advances that have been made at the producer-consumer level.

The Permanent Secretariat of the International Energy Forum, which has evolved from the initial tentative producer-consumer dialogue of the early 1990s, has now been set up in an OPEC Member Country, Saudi Arabia. OPEC's relationship with the International Energy Agency has been strengthened through different events, such as high-level bilateral meetings, joint press conferences, and the Joint Workshop on Oil Investment Prospects we held at our Secretariat in Vienna in June 2003. We have also had meetings and seminars with the Energy Treaty Secretariat and have very close contact with United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Trade Organization, just as we do with UN bodies that deal with the environment, climate change, and sustainable development.

A Wealth of Resources

This article began by claiming that OPEC cares passionately about all the world's energy sources. Now, the reader understands why such a bold—and, for many people, unexpected—claim was made. For OPEC's 11 member countries, their abundance of oil and gas reserves constitutes more than just a direct commercial benefit. It provides them with an historic opportunity to develop their economic and social infrastructures on a sustainable basis in preparation for the post-oil era each will eventually have to counter.

OPEC states' wealth of resources enables them to demonstrate to the world at large the potential for developing countries to assert themselves in the international arena on issues of global importance, especially when they relate to matters of national sovereignty. And it gives them the chance to assist in improving the economic welfare of developing countries generally, through a process founded on relationships that, in many cases, have evolved since the dawn of history.

Hence, OPEC is committed to the cause of sustainable development and its linkage to the provision of access to advanced forms of energy services for even the most impoverished communities of the world. Included in this commitment is the pledge expressed in Johannesburg last year to facilitate a substantial switch toward renewable energy sources.

However, since the infrastructure and the technology for such a switch will take a long time to develop to the required level, the world must continue in the meantime to rely upon its existing energy resources, notably petroleum, where much progress has been made in recent years to respond to environmental concerns. OPEC has a central role to play in the provision of petroleum, and hence energy, in the early 21st century, due to its large hydrocarbons reserve base; but, to be truly effective in this, the Organization will require the full support of the industry generally—producers and consumers, as well as the multinational energy companies and financial institutions.

If this support is forthcoming, then there is every reason to expect an orderly evolution of the world energy industry in the coming decades, from which the world at large will benefit. With the passage of time, the evolving energy industry will include a steadily increasing role for renewables.