Talk:1980s oil glut

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A fact from 1980s oil glut appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 11 January 2008.

The prices for oil given in the first sentence seem much too high. I think the highest price was around 40$ in 1980.--129.70.14.128 (talk) 23:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

• That was adjusted for inflation. I put in the prices in noninflation adjusted value. (Halgin (talk) 00:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC))

Contents 1 Title 2 Inflation 3 Production claims not established in sources 4 Dubious

[edit] Title

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Longer periods says "Decades contain no apostrophe (the 1980s, not the 1980’s)...". Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Lowercase second and subsequent words in titles says "Convention: Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is almost always capitalized in English (for example, proper names)." So I think this article should be moved to 1980s oil glut, not 1980's Oil Glut. Art LaPella (talk) 22:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inflation

I think this article needs a graph of inflation adjusted prices for the period. Looking at the graph now, it seems the major price drops happen in 1985, while the article talks about large decreases in OPEC production in the early 80s. NJGW (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I replaced the graph with one with Real and Nominal price of oil from 1971 to 2007. (Halgin (talk) 01:46, 17 January 2008 (UTC)).

Now we're getting somewhere, as it seems inflation adjusted prices took a fall mid 1982. Still, prices don't reach pre '74 levels until '86, so my comments below still seem relevant. NJGW (talk) 01:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Production claims not established in sources

I'm not familiar with this history, so I can't really add to it, but maybe someone can explain what happened more clearly in terms of over all production (including a graph). If anything, I've seen it suggested that it was demand drops (or demand growth drops) that caused price fluctuations, not necessarily over-supply problems. NJGW (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I just looked through all the sources and see nothing that suggests an over-production in oil in the early 80s. In fact, it wasn't until June 1985, when Saudi Arabia raised their production that prices fell drastically (back to around "normal levels"). In the period addressed by the article prices where actually drastically high! Am I missing something? When exactly was the glut? This article is a bit confused. NJGW (talk) 00:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

So now we have a production graph that shows that oil production went down in the early 80s. How can there be a glut when supply goes so low that prices shoot through the roof (prooving that demand was still there)? Sounds more like underproduction than over production. This whole thing seems like someone spinning something. NJGW (talk) 01:02, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

OPEC net oil export revenues went down from 1980 to 1986. Its oil production is dropping and the prices are falling. (Halgin (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2008 (UTC)).

OPEC revenues went down because their production went down. The price shot through the roof, so everyone else started producing more to bring the price down. OPEC responds by cutting production to try to keep prices up. The world responds by using less oil. The price of oil doesn't return DOWN to pre 1979 levels until mid 1986! This isn't a glut, this is price gouging followed by a market correction. It's right there in the graphs. It's very misleading to say prices fell from 1980 to 1985 because they were astronomically high during that period. If you want to talk about a glut, look at the pre 1970 prices of $5/barrel. If anything, the early 80s should be considered part of the 1979 oil crisis. NJGW (talk) 16:12, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious

This sentence:

Other sources believe it was a direct action from the United States CIA Director Bill Casey's plan to push the USSR to bankruptcy by having Saudi Arabia increase their production in exchange for war planes; bringing global oil prices down and reducing the revenue of the Soviet Union derived from domestic oil production.

does not seem likely to have a reliable source. It was originally put in with a blog as a source, but I removed that and put a CN tag on it. If there is no good source for this, it needs to be deleted. I have removed the text and placed it here in case anyone wants to defend it. NJGW (talk) 04:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)