For over 30 years, millions of American have tuned in to watch and listen to the award-winning NewsHour hosted by Jim Lehrer. On Monday’s program, Senior Correspondent Jeffrey Brown interviewed Georgetown Professor Robert Lieber and Amy Jaffe, director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University.
The topics included the rising price of imported oil and how OPEC and other oil-producing countries continue to push for higher prices. A full transcript of the interview is available at the NewsHour website. One of the many salient exchanges follows:
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Robert Lieber, demand for oil is still falling, right?
ROBERT LIEBER: Way down.
JEFFREY BROWN: So prices in theory should be …
ROBERT LIEBER: Yes, they should. The reason is, there is a cartel, OPEC. OPEC since September has cut production three different times. All together, they’ve cut oil production by about 4 million barrels a day. If the market mechanism were really operating, if OPEC hadn’t gotten those production cuts, oil would be a lot cheaper than it is today.
JEFFREY BROWN: And they’re doing that because they want the price up?
ROBERT LIEBER: Because a lot of those governments are in trouble because they assumed that prices would stay high, that they were going to collect so-called rents forever. And they find, as in the case of Iran or Nigeria or Venezuela or even the Saudis, that they can do a lot better if oil is at $60-plus a barrel than if it’s at $30 or $40. They would prefer $100-plus, but by cutting production they are deliberately keeping prices up.
Read the entire interview or download the audio file HERE.