opec

I wouldn’t normally flag a policy proposal by a car reviewer, but Dan Neil’s piece in The Los Angeles Times today deserves mention. With a few nifty calculations, he argues that we could cut our dependence on OPEC oil by 50 percent over ten years, simply by buying millions of hybrids and giving them away [...]

The cost of a barrel of oil is sliding as demand weakens and the global economy falters. Economists wonder whether the conservation lessons learned during the time of high energy prices will stick. But a recession may trump all.

Since oil prices plummeted to below $70 a barrel, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has been talking about cutting oil production to respond to a demand that just keeps dropping. Today, OPEC is doing it. It announced a plan to cut oil output by 1.5 million barrels.