Falling Oil Prices
By Katie Brinn
The holiday season is upon us, and for many Americans that means … road trip!
But if you’re bracing for the pain at the pump you’ve gotten used to over the past few years, think again. Oil prices are the lowest they’ve been in years, and gas prices have plummeted along with them, hovering at about $2.54 a gallon across the United States. That means this year, it’s about 21 percent cheaper to drive to Grandma’s house.
No complaints here! But countries like Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, some of the biggest oil exporters in the world, have begun to worry. Lower oil prices means less revenue for them, and that could mean a major hit to those countries’ economies.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the biggest cartel of oil producers in the world, has been meeting to try to reverse this sudden slump in cash flow.
The group had two major options: Slow down production to drive prices back up, or commit to a price war with one of the world’s newest leaders in oil and natural gas production — the United States.
To find out what could happen next — and to learn how prices fell so far in the first place — watch the video above, so when it comes to falling oil prices, you can say, “Now I get it.”
