Agreed on OPEC in broad-brush, but not in detail.

If you've been tracking Saudi/OPEC pricing, you'll see it spikes downwards periodically. Why? It seems to me it's about making alternative energy production an uncertain thing for investors - and so make it more difficult for those AEs to raise capital.

I ran across an interview with Saudi minister Sheikh Yamani in an old Aramco World where he mentions his intent to do that. Aramco World is (or at least was) a for-shareholders publication - this was couched as something being done 'to increase shareholder value'.

The long-term effect of that policy, as I see it, is that solar panels are made in China and wind turbines in Germany. But stockholder value!

And no, I wasn't some kind of big investor - I had ONE stock which my grandfather gave me when I was a pre-teen.