In a release published on its website, the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) who produces about 40% of global crude oil announced that price of the barrel for all 13 types of crudes that its basket price contains, slumped down to $29.71 on January 6, 2015, dropping below $30 for the first time ever since 2004.

This basket price includes crudes produced by countries like Nigeria (Africa’s leading economy), Angola (third African economy) and Algeria who already greatly suffered from the drop in the price of crude and who, unlike Saudi Arabia, unfortunately do not have $627bn of foreign exchange reserves.

Experts said the prices slumped this week because of the rising concerns about China will handle its economy and efficiently solve the crisis which is currently striking it financial markets. To overcome this slump, with Saudi Arabia leading it, the OPEC decided not to decrease its production so that prices rise again.

One of the reasons for this strategy was to slow the rising of US and Russia-produced schist oil on markets. Unfortunately, the strategy proved unsuccessful. Truly, though the US production fell 4.1%, the members of OPEC lost up to $500bn of potential revenues.

Today, what is left to know is to see if African countries or countries from South America such as Venezuela will keep using this strategy. Some observers anticipated that prices will rise again as a result of the crisis which opposes Shiite to Sunni in the Middle East. A thing is clear now: the oil production is not involved.

Idriss Linge