OPEC’s output in the first four months of 1986 averaged about 17.8 million barrels per day—only about 9 percent higher than 1985 production, and in fact, at about the same level as the 1983 quota. Overall, the additional production meant not much more than a 3 percent increase in total free world oil supply! Yet that, combined with the commitment to market share, was enough to drive prices down to levels so low as to have been virtually unimaginable only months earlier. It was, indeed, the Third Oil Shock, but all the consequences ran in the opposite direction. Now, the exporters were
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