You're probably less familiar with OPIC, the Organization of Petroleum Importing Countries, namely because it doesn't exist yet, and that was the focus of the TIER's recent discussion.

The TIER resolved that it's high time the industrialized world established an OPIC. The price of oil, despite its recent, modest pullback, is still up more than 50% in 2007, and up more than 110% since January 2005, a scant three years ago. Further, as has been reported on Boggingstocks, the global, long-term trends regarding oil do not look good: absent substantial reductions in demand growth, oil is headed higher in the decades ahead.

Further, OPEC, through a reasonable amount of coalition discipline regarding its oil production, has been able to influence oil's price. True, the emergence of non-OPEC oil suppliers has reduced the group's influence from the 1973-85 period -- when it seemed like OPEC could single-handedly raise or lower the global price of a barrel of oil -- but few would deny that OPEC still is a factor in setting the current price for oil.

And that's what the TIER wants the new OPIC to be: a factor helping to determine oil's price. The TIER resolved that the major oil importing nations of the industrialized world -- the United States, Germany, Non-U.K. Europe, China, Japan, and India could wield substantially more power if they formulated, and adhered to, an international oil consumption policy, as a bloc.

An OPIC would increase the industrialized world's leverage regarding oil's price. If OPEC lowers oil production, seeking to support a high price, OPIC implements automatic, mandatory oil consumption cutbacks to help bring the price down.

Equally important, an OPIC would grant the industrialized world more time to develop alternate energy sources. Unless one doesn't believe oil burning has contributed to climate change, it's generally a good thing to burn less and less oil in the decades ahead, and an OPIC would help achieve this goal. (The coalition could also dedicate a portion of each nation-states' annual membership fee to alternate energy research and development.)

It never ceases to amaze the TIER why the industrialized world, with its enormous purchasing power leverage, has not organized to form a consumption cartel in response to OPEC's production cartel. Critics often cite "the American oil lobby" as the reason, but there are industrialized nations where that lobby is not very strong. Others say it's too hard for nations to agree on such a complex issue. However, there are dozens of issues -- from products, to air travel standards, to fishing -- that nations have reached agreement on.

The TIER resolved that an OPIC is long overdue. With global oil demand rising from strong emerging market growth, and a basket of geopolitical concerns in oil-sensitive regions, it seems prudent for the industrialized world to take control of its energy future, before the reverse gains momentum.