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Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale

Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (Albert Victor Christian Edward; 8 January 1864 – 14 January 1892) was the eldest child of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). From the time of his birth, he was second in the line of succession to the British throne, but did not become king or prince of Wales because he died before both his grandmother Queen Victoria and his father.

Albert Victor was known to his family, and many later biographers, as "Eddy". When young, he travelled the world extensively as a Royal Navy cadet, and as an adult he joined the British Army but did not undertake any active military duties. After two unsuccessful courtships, he became engaged to be married to his second cousin once removed Princess Victoria Mary of Teck in late 1891. A few weeks later, he died during a major flu pandemic. Mary later married his younger brother, the future King George V.

Albert Victor's intellect, sexuality, and mental health have been the subject of speculation. Rumours in his time linked him with the Cleveland Street scandal, which involved a homosexual brothel. However, there is no conclusive evidence that he ever went there, or that he was homosexual. Some authors have argued that he was the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, or that he was otherwise involved in the murders, but contemporaneous documents show that Albert Victor could not have been in London at the time of the murders, and the claim is widely dismissed.

Early life
Albert Victor was born two months prematurely on 8 January 1864 at Frogmore House, Windsor, Berkshire. He was the first child of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and his wife Alexandra of Denmark. Following his grandmother Queen Victoria's wishes, he was named Albert Victor after the Queen and her late husband, Prince Albert. As a grandchild of the reigning British monarch in the male line and a son of the Prince of Wales, he was formally styled His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor of Wales from birth. He was christened Albert Victor Christian Edward in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 10 March 1864 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Longley, but was known informally as "Eddy".

Education
When Albert Victor was just short of seventeen months old, his brother, Prince George of Wales, was born in June 1865. Given their closeness in age, they were educated together. In 1871, the Queen appointed John Neale Dalton as their tutor. The two princes were given a strict programme of study, which included games and military drills as well as academic subjects. Dalton complained that Albert Victor's mind was "abnormally dormant".

Though Albert Victor learnt to speak his mother's native Danish, progress in other languages and subjects was slow. Sir Henry Ponsonby thought that Albert Victor might have inherited his mother's deafness. The prince never excelled intellectually. Possible physical explanations for his inattention or indolence in class include absence seizures or his premature birth, which can be associated with learning difficulties, but Lady Geraldine Somerset blamed Albert Victor's poor education on Dalton, whom she considered uninspiring.

Separating the brothers for the remainder of their education was considered, but Dalton advised the Prince of Wales against splitting them up as "Prince Albert Victor requires the stimulus of Prince George's company to induce him to work at all." In 1877, the two boys were sent to the Royal Navy's training ship, HMS Britannia. They began their studies there two months behind the other cadets as Albert Victor contracted typhoid fever, for which he was treated by Sir William Gull. Dalton accompanied them as chaplain to the ship.

In 1879, after a great deal of discussion between the Queen, the Prince of Wales, their households and the Government, the royal brothers were sent as naval cadets on a three-year world tour aboard HMS Bacchante. Albert Victor was rated midshipman on his sixteenth birthday. They toured the British Empire, accompanied by Dalton, visiting the Americas, the Falkland Islands, South Africa, Australia, Fiji, the Far East, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Egypt, the Holy Land and Greece. They acquired tattoos in Japan. By the time they returned to Britain, Albert Victor was eighteen.

The brothers were parted in 1883; George continued in the navy and Albert Victor attended Trinity College, Cambridge. At Bachelor's Cottage, Sandringham, Albert Victor was expected to cram before arriving at university in the company of Dalton, French instructor Monsieur Hua, and a newly chosen tutor/companion, James Kenneth Stephen. Some biographers have said that Stephen was a misogynist, although this has recently been questioned, and he may have felt emotionally attached to Albert Victor, but whether or not his feelings were overtly homosexual is open to question. Stephen was initially optimistic about tutoring the prince, but by the time the party were to move to Cambridge had concluded, "I do not think he can possibly derive much benefit from attending lectures at Cambridge ... He hardly knows the meaning of the words to read".

At the start of the new term in October, Albert Victor, Dalton, and Lieutenant Henderson from Bacchante moved to Nevile's Court at Trinity College, which was generally reserved for accommodating dons rather than students. The prince showed little interest in the intellectual atmosphere, and he was excused from examinations, though he did become involved in undergraduate life. He was introduced to Oscar Browning, a noted don who gave parties and "made pets of those undergraduates who were handsome and attractive", and became friendly with Dalton's godson, Alfred Fripp, who later became his doctor and royal surgeon. It is not known whether he had any sexual experiences at Cambridge, but partners of either sex would have been available. In August 1884, he spent some time at Heidelberg University studying German, before returning to Cambridge. Leaving Cambridge in 1885, where he had already served as a cadet in the 2nd Cambridge University Battalion, he was gazetted as an officer in the 10th Hussars. In 1888, he was awarded an honorary degree by the university.

One of Albert Victor's instructors said he learnt by listening rather than reading or writing and had no difficulty remembering information, but Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, had a less favourable opinion of him, calling him "an inveterate and incurable dawdler". Princess Augusta of Cambridge was also dismissive, calling him: "si peu de chose" [such a small thing].

Much of Albert Victor's time at his post in Aldershot was spent drilling, which he disliked, though he did like to play polo. He passed his examinations, and in March 1887, he was posted to Hounslow where he was promoted to captain. He was given more public engagements, visited Ireland and Gibraltar, and opened the Hammersmith suspension bridge. Of his private life, a childhood friend of Albert Victor later recalled that it was uneventful: "his brother officers had said that they would like to make a man of the world of him. Into that world he refused to be initiated."

Cleveland Street scandal

In July 1889, the Metropolitan Police uncovered a male brothel operated by Charles Hammond in Cleveland Street, London. Under police interrogation, the male prostitutes and pimps revealed the names of their clients, who included Lord Arthur Somerset, an Extra Equerry to the Prince of Wales. At the time, all homosexual acts between men were illegal, and the clients faced social ostracism, prosecution and, at worst, two years' imprisonment with hard labour.

The resultant Cleveland Street scandal implicated other high-ranking figures in British society, and rumours swept upper-class London of the involvement of a member of the royal family, namely Prince Albert Victor. The prostitutes had not named Albert Victor, and it is suggested that Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, fabricated and spread the rumours to take the heat off his client. Letters exchanged between the Treasury Solicitor, Sir Augustus Stephenson, and his assistant, Hamilton Cuffe, make coded reference to Newton's threats to implicate Albert Victor.

In December 1889, it was reported that the Prince and Princess of Wales were "daily assailed with anonymous letters of the most outrageous character" bearing upon the scandal. The Prince of Wales intervened in the investigation; no clients were ever prosecuted and nothing against Albert Victor was proven. Sir Charles Russell was retained to watch the proceedings in the case on behalf of Albert Victor. Although there is no conclusive evidence for or against his involvement, or that he ever visited a homosexual club or brothel, the rumours and cover-up have led some biographers to speculate that he did visit Cleveland Street, and that he was "possibly bisexual, probably homosexual". This is contested by other commentators, one of whom refers to him as "ardently heterosexual" and his involvement in the rumours as "somewhat unfair". Historian H. Montgomery Hyde wrote: "There is no evidence that he was homosexual, or even bisexual."

While English newspapers suppressed mention of Albert Victor's name in association with the case, Welsh-language, colonial, and American newspapers were less inhibited. The New York Times ridiculed him as a "dullard" and "stupid perverse boy", who would "never be allowed to ascend the British throne". According to one American press report, when departing the Gare du Nord in Paris in May 1890, Albert Victor was cheered by a waiting crowd of English, but hissed and catcalled by some of the French; one journalist present asked him if he would comment "as to the cause of his sudden departure from England". According to the report, "The Prince's sallow face turned scarlet and his eyes seemed to start from their orbits," and he had one of his companions upbraid the fellow for impertinence.

Somerset's sister, Lady Waterford, denied that her brother knew anything about Albert Victor. She wrote, "I am sure the boy is as straight as a line ... Arthur does not the least know how or where the boy spends his time ... he believes the boy to be perfectly innocent." Lady Waterford also believed Somerset's protestations of his own innocence. In surviving private letters to his friend Lord Esher, Somerset denies knowing anything directly about Albert Victor, but confirms that he has heard the rumours, and hopes that they will help quash any prosecution. He wrote, "I can quite understand the Prince of Wales being much annoyed at his son's name being coupled with the thing but that was the case before I left it ... we were both accused of going to this place but not together ... they will end by having out in open court exactly what they are all trying to keep quiet. I wonder if it is really a fact or only an invention of that arch ruffian H[ammond]." He continued, I have never mentioned the boy's name except to Probyn, Montagu and Knollys when they were acting for me and I thought they ought to know. Had they been wise, hearing what I knew and therefore what others knew, they ought to have hushed the matter up, instead of stirring it up as they did, with all the authorities. The rumours persisted; sixty years later the official biographer of George V, Harold Nicolson, was told by Lord Goddard, who was a twelve-year-old schoolboy at the time of the scandal, that Albert Victor "had been involved in a male brothel scene, and that a solicitor had to commit perjury to clear him. The solicitor was struck off the rolls for his offence, but was thereafter reinstated." In fact, none of the lawyers in the case was convicted of perjury or struck off during the scandal, but Somerset's solicitor, Arthur Newton, was convicted of obstruction of justice for helping his clients escape abroad, and was sentenced to six weeks in prison. Over twenty years later in 1910, Newton was struck off for twelve months for professional misconduct after falsifying letters from another of his clients, the notorious murderer Dr Crippen. In 1913, Newton was struck off indefinitely and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for obtaining money by false pretences.

Tour of India
The foreign press suggested that Albert Victor was sent on a seven-month tour of British India from October 1889 to avoid the gossip which swept London society in the wake of the scandal. This is not true; the trip had actually been planned since the spring. Travelling via Athens, Port Said, Cairo and Aden, Albert Victor arrived in Bombay on 9 November 1889. He was entertained sumptuously in Hyderabad by the Nizam, and elsewhere by many other maharajahs. In Bangalore he laid the foundation stone of the Glass House at the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens on 30 November 1889. He spent Christmas at Mandalay and the New Year at Calcutta. Most of the extensive travelling was done by train, although elephants were ridden as part of ceremonies. In the style of the time, a great many animals were shot for sport.

During the trip, Albert Victor met Mrs. Margery Haddon, the wife of a civil engineer, Henry Haddon. After several failed marriages and Albert Victor's death, Margery came to England and claimed the Prince was the father of her son, Clarence Haddon. There was no evidence and her claims were dismissed. She had become an alcoholic and seemed deranged. The allegations were reported to Buckingham Palace and the head of the police Special Branch investigated. Papers in The National Archives show that neither courtiers nor Margery had any proof to support the allegation. In a statement to police, Albert Victor's lawyers admitted that there had been "some relations" between him and Mrs. Haddon, but denied the claim of fatherhood.

In the 1920s, however, the son, Clarence, repeated the story and published a book in the United States, My Uncle George V, in which he claimed he was born in London in September 1890, about nine months after Albert Victor's meeting with Mrs. Haddon. In 1933, he was charged with demanding money with menace and attempted extortion after writing to the King asking for hush money. At his trial the following January, the prosecution produced documents showing that Haddon's enlistment papers, marriage certificate, officer's commission, demobilisation papers and employment records all showed he was born in or before 1887, at least two years before Albert Victor met Mrs. Haddon. Haddon was found guilty and the judge, believing Haddon to be suffering from delusions, did not imprison him but bound him over for three years on the condition that he made no claim that he was Albert Victor's son. Haddon breached the conditions and was incarcerated for a year. Dismissed as a crank, he died a broken man. Even if Haddon's claim had been true, as with other illegitimate births it would have made no difference to the royal line of succession.

On his return from India, Albert Victor was created Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Earl of Athlone on 24 May 1890, Queen Victoria's 71st birthday.

Potential brides

In 1889, Queen Victoria expressed her wish that Albert Victor marry his cousin Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, who was one of her favorite granddaughters. In Balmoral Castle, he proposed to Alix, but she did not return his affections and refused his offer of engagement. He persisted in trying to convince Alix to marry him, but he finally gave up in 1890 when she sent him a letter in which she told him "how it grieves her to pain him, but that she cannot marry him, much as she likes him as a Cousin." In 1894, she married Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, another of Albert Victor's cousins.

After her proposed match with Alix fell through, the Queen suggested to Albert Victor that he marry another first cousin, Princess Margaret of Prussia. On 19 May 1890, she sent him a formal letter in which she expressed her opinions about Margaret's suitability to become queen: "Of the few possible Princesses (for of course any Lady in Society would never do) I think no one more likely to suit you and the position better than your Cousin Mossy ... She is not regularly pretty but she has a very pretty figure, is very amiable and half English with great love for England which you will find in very few if any others." Although Albert Victor's father approved, Queen Victoria's secretary Henry Ponsonby informed her that Albert Victor's mother "would object most strongly and indeed has already done so." Nothing came of the Queen's suggestion.

By this time however, Albert Victor was falling in love with Princess Hélène of Orléans, a daughter of Prince Philippe, Count of Paris, a pretender to the French throne who was living in England after being banished from France in 1886. At first, Queen Victoria opposed any engagement because Hélène was Roman Catholic. Once Albert Victor and Hélène confided their love to her, the Queen relented and supported the proposed marriage. Hélène offered to convert to the Church of England, and Albert Victor offered to renounce his succession rights to marry her.

To the couple's disappointment, Hélène's father refused to countenance the marriage and was adamant she could not convert. Hélène travelled personally to intercede with Pope Leo XIII, but he confirmed her father's verdict, and the courtship ended. When Albert Victor died, his sisters Maud and Louise sympathized with Hélène and treated her, not his fiancée Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, as his true love. Maud told her that "he is buried with your little coin around his neck" and Louise said that he is "yours in death". Hélène later became Duchess of Aosta.

By 1891, another potential bride, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, was under consideration. Mary was the daughter of Queen Victoria's first cousin Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck. The Queen was very supportive, considering Mary ideal—charming, sensible and pretty. On 3 December 1891 Albert Victor, to Mary's "great surprise", proposed to her at Luton Hoo, the country residence of the Danish ambassador to Britain. The wedding was set for 27 February 1892.

Personal life
In 1891, Albert Victor wrote to Lady Sybil St Clair Erskine that he was in love once again, though he does not say with whom. A week after the first letter, he asked Erskine, "I wonder if you really love me a little? ... I should be very pleased if you did just a little bit."

In late 1891, Albert Victor was implicated as having been involved with a former Gaiety Theatre chorus girl, Lydia Miller (stage name Lydia Manton), who committed suicide by drinking carbolic acid. Although she was the nominal mistress of Lord Charles Montagu, who gave evidence at the inquest, it was alleged that he was merely a cover for the Prince, who had requested she give up her theatrical career on his behalf, and that the authorities sought to suppress the case by making the inquest private and refusing access to the depositions. Similarly to the Cleveland Street scandal, only overseas newspapers printed Albert Victor's name, but regional British newspapers did quote the radical London newspaper The Star which published: "It is a fact so well known that the blind denials of it given in some quarters are childishly futile. Lydia Manton was the petite amie of a certain young prince, and that, too, quite recently." It was labelled "a scandal of the first magnitude ... on the lips of every clubman", and compared to the Tranby Croft affair, in which his father was called to give evidence at a trial for slander.

Rumours also surfaced in 1900, after Albert Victor's death, of his association with another former Gaiety girl, Maude Richardson (birth name: Louisa Lancey), and that the royal family had attempted to pay her off. In 2002, letters purported to have been sent by Albert Victor to his solicitor referring to a payoff made to Richardson of £200 were sold at Bonhams auction house in London. Owing to discrepancies in the dates and spelling of the letters, one historian has suggested they could be forgeries.

In mid-1890, Albert Victor was attended by several doctors. In Albert Victor's and other correspondence, his illness is only referred to as "fever" or "gout". Some biographers have assumed he was suffering from "a mild form of venereal disease", perhaps gonorrhea, which he may have suffered from on an earlier occasion, but the exact nature of his illness is unknown. Letters dated 1885 and 1886 from Albert Victor to his doctor at Aldershot (known only as "Roche") detail that he was taking medicine for 'glete' (gleet), then a term for gonorrhea discharge.

Death

Just as plans for both his marriage to Mary and his appointment as Viceroy of Ireland were under discussion, Albert Victor fell ill with influenza in the pandemic of 1889–1892. He developed pneumonia and died at Sandringham House in Norfolk on 14 January 1892, less than a week after his 28th birthday.

Albert Victor's parents, his sisters Princesses Maud and Victoria, his brother Prince George, his fiancée Princess Mary, her parents the Duke and Duchess of Teck, three physicians (Alan Reeve Manby, Francis Laking and William Broadbent) and three nurses were present. The Prince of Wales's chaplain, Canon Frederick Hervey, stood over Albert Victor reading prayers for the dying.

The nation was shocked. Shops put up their shutters. The Prince of Wales wrote to the Queen, "Gladly would I have given my life for his". Princess Mary wrote to the Queen of the Princess of Wales, "the despairing look on her face was the most heart-rending thing I have ever seen." Prince George wrote, "how deeply I did love him; & I remember with pain nearly every hard word & little quarrel I ever had with him & I long to ask his forgiveness, but, alas, it is too late now!" George took Albert Victor's place in the line of succession, eventually succeeding to the throne as George V in 1910. Drawn together during their shared period of mourning, Prince George later married Mary himself in 1893. She became queen consort on George's accession.

Albert Victor's mother, Alexandra, never fully recovered from her son's death and kept the room in which he died as a shrine. At the funeral, Mary laid her intended bridal wreath of orange blossom upon the coffin. James Kenneth Stephen, Albert Victor's former tutor, refused all food from the day of Albert Victor's death and died 20 days later; he had suffered a head injury in 1886 which left him suffering from psychosis. The prince is buried in the Albert Memorial Chapel close to St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. His tomb, by Alfred Gilbert, is "the finest single example of late 19th-century sculpture in the British Isles". A recumbent effigy of the Prince in a Hussar uniform (almost impossible to see properly in situ) lies above the tomb. Kneeling over him is an angel, holding a heavenly crown. The tomb is surrounded by an elaborate railing, with figures of saints. The perfectionist Gilbert spent too much on the commission, went bankrupt, and left the country. Five of the smaller figures were only completed with "a greater roughness and pittedness of texture" after his return to Britain in the 1920s.

One obituary, written by a journalist who claimed to have attended the majority of Albert Victor's public appearances, stated: He was little known personally to the English public. His absence at sea, and on travels and duty with his regiment, kept him out of the general eye ... at times, there was a sallowness of hue, which much increased the grave aspect ... not only in the metropolis, but throughout the country, somehow, it was always said, 'He will never come to the throne.

Legacy
During his life, the bulk of the British press treated Albert Victor with nothing but respect and the eulogies that immediately followed his death were full of praise. The radical politician Henry Broadhurst, who had met both Albert Victor and his brother George, noted that they had "a total absence of affectation or haughtiness". On the day of Albert Victor's death, the leading Liberal politician, William Ewart Gladstone, wrote in his personal private diary "a great loss to our party". However, Queen Victoria referred to Albert Victor's "dissipated life" in private letters to her eldest daughter, which were later published.

In the mid-20th century, the official biographers of Queen Mary and King George V, James Pope-Hennessy and Harold Nicolson respectively, promoted hostile assessments of Albert Victor's life, portraying him as lazy, ill-educated and physically feeble. The exact nature of his "dissipations" is not clear, but in 1994 Theo Aronson favoured the theory on "admittedly circumstantial" evidence that the "unspecified 'dissipations' were predominantly homosexual". Aronson's judgement was based on Albert Victor's "adoration of his elegant and possessive mother; his 'want of manliness'; his 'shrinking from horseplay'; [and] his 'sweet, gentle, quiet and charming' nature", as well as the Cleveland Street rumours and his opinion that there is "a certain amount of homosexuality in all men". He admitted, however, that "the allegations of Prince Eddy's homosexuality must be treated cautiously."

Rumours that Albert Victor may have committed, or been responsible for, the Jack the Ripper murders were first mentioned in print in 1962. It was later alleged, among others by Stephen Knight in Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, that Albert Victor fathered a child with a woman in the Whitechapel district of London, and either he or several high-ranking men committed the murders in an effort to cover up his indiscretion. Though such claims have been repeated frequently, scholars have dismissed them as fantasies, and refer to indisputable proof of the Prince's innocence.

For example, on 30 September 1888, when Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were murdered in London, Albert Victor was over 500 miles (over 800 km) away at Balmoral, the royal retreat in Scotland, in the presence of Queen Victoria, other family members, visiting German royalty and a large number of staff. According to the official Court Circular, family journals and letters, newspaper reports and other sources, he could not have been near any of the murders. Other fanciful conspiracy theories are that he died of syphilis or poison, that he was pushed off a cliff on the instructions of Lord Randolph Churchill, or that his death was faked to remove him from the line of succession.

Albert Victor's posthumous reputation became so bad that in 1964 Philip Magnus called his death a "merciful act of providence", supporting the theory that his death removed an unsuitable heir to the throne and replaced him with the reliable and sober George V. In 1972, Michael Harrison was the first modern author to re-assess Albert Victor and portray him in a more sympathetic light. Biographer Andrew Cook continued attempts to rehabilitate Albert Victor's reputation, arguing that his lack of academic progress was partly due to the incompetence of his tutor, Dalton; that he was a warm and charming man; that there is no tangible evidence that he was homosexual or bisexual; that he held liberal views, particularly on Irish Home Rule; and that his reputation was diminished by biographers eager to improve the image of his brother, George.

Fictional portrayals
The conspiracy theories surrounding Albert Victor have led to his portrayal in film as somehow responsible for or involved in the Jack the Ripper murders. Bob Clark's Sherlock Holmes mystery Murder by Decree was released in 1979 with "Duke of Clarence (Eddy)" played by Robin Marchal. Jack the Ripper was released in 1988 with Marc Culwick as Prince Albert Victor. Samuel West played "Prince Eddy" in The Ripper (1997), having previously played Albert Victor as a child in the 1975 TV miniseries Edward the Seventh. Albert Victor was portrayed at older ages in Edward the Seventh by, successively, Jerome Watts and Charles Dance.

From 1989 to 1998 Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell published the graphic novel From Hell in serialized form, which is based on Stephen Knight's theory. It was adapted into a 2001 film of the same name by the Hughes brothers. Mark Dexter portrayed both "Prince Edward" and "Albert Sickert". The story, based largely on the same sources as Murder by Decree, is also the basis for the play Force and Hypocrisy by Doug Lucie. He also appears as a major but offstage character in the 2023 The Flea, based on the Cleveland Street scandal.

Honours
British honours
 * KG: Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 3 September 1883
 * KP: Extra Knight of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, 28 June 1887
 * ADC: Personal Aide-de-Camp to the Queen, 21 June 1887
 * LLD: Doctor of Laws, University of Dublin, 1887
 * LLD: Doctor of Laws, University of Cambridge, 1888
 * Sub-Prior of the Venerable Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, 1888

Foreign honours
 * 🇳🇱 Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion
 * Grand Cross of the Royal Military Order of the Tower and Sword, 5 March 1885
 * Grand Cross of the Royal and Distinguished Order of Charles III, with Collar, 23 January 1885
 * Order of Osmanieh, 1st Class in Diamonds
 * Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania
 * Knight of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, 8 January 1885
 * Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross
 * Grand Cross of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order, 1883
 * Grand Cross of the Grand Ducal Hessian Order of Ludwig, 30 April 1884
 * Grand Cross of the Order of the White Falcon, 1885
 * 🇩🇰 Knight of the Order of the Elephant, 11 October 1883
 * 🇸🇪 🇳🇴 Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim, 8 January 1885
 * Knight of the Order of the Black Eagle, 8 January 1885
 * 🇧🇪 Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold, 1885
 * Grand Cross of the Royal Hungarian Order of Saint Stephen, 1887

Military

 * 1877–1879: Cadet aboard training ship HMS Britannia, Dartmouth, Devon
 * 1879–1880: Cadet, HMS Bacchante
 * Mid, 1880–1883: Promoted to midshipman, HMS Bacchante
 * Lt, 1886–1887: Appointed Lieutenant, 10th (Prince of Wales' Own) Royal Hussars
 * Capt, 1887: Promoted to captain, 9th Queen's Royal Lancers
 * Capt, 1887–1889: Captain, 3rd King's Royal Rifle Corps
 * Maj, 1889–1892: Major, 10th (Prince of Wales' Own) Royal Hussars

Honorary military appointments
British
 * Honorary Sub-Lieutenant, Royal Naval Reserve, 8 January 1883
 * Honorary Colonel, 4th Regiment, Bengal Infantry
 * Honorary Colonel, 4th Bombay Cavalry
 * Honorary Colonel, 1st Punjab Cavalry
 * Honorary Colonel, Third City of London Rifle Volunteer Corps (7th (City of London) Battalion, London Regiment) 1890–92

Arms
With his dukedom, Albert Victor was granted a coat of arms, being the royal arms of the United Kingdom, differenced by an inescutcheon of the arms of Saxony and a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing a cross gules.


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OPEC

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC, ) is an organization enabling the co-operation of leading oil-producing and oil-dependent countries in order to collectively influence the global oil market and maximize profit. It was founded on 14 September 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela). The organization, which currently comprises 12 member countries, accounted for an estimated 30 percent of global oil production. A 2022 report further details that OPEC member countries were responsible for approximately 38 percent of it. Additionally, it is estimated that 79.5 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are located within OPEC nations, with the Middle East alone accounting for 67.2 percent of OPEC's total reserves.

In a series of steps in the 1960s and 1970s, OPEC restructured the global system of oil production in favor of oil-producing states and away from an oligopoly of dominant Anglo-American oil firms (the "Seven Sisters"). In the 1970s, restrictions in oil production led to a dramatic rise in oil prices with long-lasting and far-reaching consequences for the global economy. Since the 1980s, OPEC has had a limited impact on world oil-supply and oil-price stability, as there is frequent cheating by members on their commitments to one another, and as member commitments reflect what they would do even in the absence of OPEC. However, since 2020, OPEC countries along with non-OPEC participants had helped in stabilising oil markets after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a collapse in oil demand. This has allowed oil markets to remain stable relative to other energy markets that experienced unprecedented volatility.

The formation of OPEC marked a turning point toward national sovereignty over natural resources. OPEC decisions have come to play a prominent role in the global oil-market and in international relations. Economists have characterized OPEC as a textbook example of a cartel (a group whose members cooperate to reduce market competition) but one whose consultations may be protected by the doctrine of state immunity under international law.

Algeria, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, the Republic of the Congo, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Meanwhile, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Qatar are former OPEC members. A larger group called OPEC+, consisting of OPEC members plus other oil-producing countries, formed in late 2016 to exert more control on the global crude-oil market. Canada, Egypt, Norway, and Oman are observer states.

Organization and structure
In a series of steps in the 1960s and 1970s, OPEC restructured the global system of oil production in favor of oil-producing states and away from an oligopoly of dominant Anglo-American oil firms (the Seven Sisters). Coordination among oil-producing states within OPEC made it easier for them to nationalize oil production and structure oil prices in their favor without incurring punishment by Western governments and firms. Prior to the creation of OPEC, individual oil-producing states were punished for taking steps to alter the governing arrangements of oil production within their borders. States were coerced militarily (e.g. in 1953, the US-UK-sponsored a coup against Mohammad Mosaddegh after he nationalized Iran's oil production) or economically (e.g. the Seven Sisters slowed down oil production in one non-compliant state and ramped up oil production elsewhere) when acted contrary to the interests of the Seven Sisters and their governments.

The organisational logic that underpins OPEC is that it is in the collective interest of its members to limit the world oil supply in order to reap higher prices. However, the main problem within OPEC is that it is individually rational for members to cheat on commitments and produce as much oil as possible.

Political scientist Jeff Colgan has argued that OPEC has since the 1980s largely failed to achieve its goals (limits on world oil supply, stabilized prices, and raising of long-term average revenues). He finds that members have cheated on 96% of their commitments. The analysis spans over the period 1982–2009. To the extent that when member states comply with their commitments, it is because the commitments reflect what they would do even if OPEC did not exist. One large reason for the frequent cheating is that OPEC does not punish members for non-compliance with commitments.

In June 2020, all countries participating in the OPEC+ framework collectively agreed to the introduction of a Compensation Mechanism aimed at ensuring full conformity with and adherence to the agreed-upon oil production cuts. This initiative aligns with one of OPEC's stated objectives: to maintain a stable oil market, which, notably, has been relatively more stable than other energy commodities.

Leadership and decision-making
The OPEC Conference is the supreme authority of the organisation, and consists of delegations normally headed by the oil ministers of member countries. The chief executive of the organisation is the OPEC secretary general. The conference ordinarily meets at the Vienna headquarters, at least twice a year and in additional extraordinary sessions when necessary. It generally operates on the principles of unanimity and "one member, one vote", with each country paying an equal membership fee into the annual budget. However, since Saudi Arabia is by far the largest and most-profitable oil exporter in the world, with enough capacity to function as the traditional swing producer to balance the global market, it serves as "OPEC's de facto leader".

International cartel
At various times, OPEC members have displayed apparent anti-competitive cartel behavior through the organisation's agreements about oil production and price levels. Economists often cite OPEC as a textbook example of a cartel that cooperates to reduce market competition, as in this definition from OECD's Glossary of Industrial Organisation Economics and Competition Law:

"International commodity agreements covering products such as coffee, sugar, tin and more recently oil (OPEC: Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) are examples of international cartels which have publicly entailed agreements between different national governments."While OPEC is at times cited as a textbook example of a cartel, various authoritative and academic sources provide a broader perspective on the organization's role. For instance, the US Energy Information Administration's glossary explains OPEC as: "An intergovernmental organization whose stated objective is to 'coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of member countries'." The Oxford Dictionary of Energy Science (2017) defines OPEC as: "An organization set up in 1960 to coordinate petroleum policies among its member countries, initially with the aim of securing a regular supply to consuming countries at a price that gave a fair return on capital investment." OPEC members strongly prefer to describe their organisation as a modest force for market stabilisation, rather than a powerful anti-competitive cartel. In its defense, the organisation was founded as a counterweight against the previous "Seven Sisters" cartel of multinational oil companies, and non-OPEC energy suppliers have maintained enough market share for a substantial degree of worldwide competition. Moreover, because of an economic "prisoner's dilemma" that encourages each member nation individually to discount its price and exceed its production quota, widespread cheating within OPEC often erodes its ability to influence global oil prices through collective action. Political scientist Jeff Colgan has challenged that OPEC is a cartel, pointing to endemic cheating in the organization: "A cartel needs to set tough goals and meet them; OPEC sets easy goals and fails to meet even those."

OPEC has not been involved in any disputes related to the competition rules of the World Trade Organization, even though the objectives, actions, and principles of the two organisations diverge considerably. A key US District Court decision held that OPEC consultations are protected as "governmental" acts of state by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and are therefore beyond the legal reach of US competition law governing "commercial" acts. Despite popular sentiment against OPEC, legislative proposals to limit the organisation's sovereign immunity, such as the NOPEC Act, have so far been unsuccessful.

Conflicts
OPEC often has difficulty agreeing on policy decisions because its member countries differ widely in their oil export capacities, production costs, reserves, geological features, population, economic development, budgetary situations, and political circumstances. Indeed, over the course of market cycles, oil reserves can themselves become a source of serious conflict, instability and imbalances, in what economists call the "natural resource curse". A further complication is that religion-linked conflicts in the Middle East are recurring features of the geopolitical landscape for this oil-rich region. Internationally important conflicts in OPEC's history have included the Six-Day War (1967), Yom Kippur War (1973), a hostage siege directed by Palestinian militants (1975), the Iranian Revolution (1979), Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), Iraqi occupation of Kuwait (1990–1991), September 11 attacks (2001), American occupation of Iraq (2003–2011), Conflict in the Niger Delta (2004–present), Arab Spring (2010–2012), Libyan Crisis (2011–present), and international Embargo against Iran (2012–2016). Although events such as these can temporarily disrupt oil supplies and elevate prices, the frequent disputes and instabilities tend to limit OPEC's long-term cohesion and effectiveness.

Post-WWII situation
In 1949, Venezuela initiated the move towards the establishment of what would become OPEC, by inviting Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to exchange views and explore avenues for more regular and closer communication among petroleum-exporting nations as the world recovered from World War II. At the time, some of the world's largest oil fields were just entering production in the Middle East. The United States had established the Interstate Oil Compact Commission to join the Texas Railroad Commission in limiting overproduction. The US was simultaneously the world's largest producer and consumer of oil; the world market was dominated by a group of multinational companies known as the "Seven Sisters", five of which were headquartered in the US following the breakup of John D. Rockefeller's original Standard Oil monopoly. Oil-exporting countries were eventually motivated to form OPEC as a counterweight to this concentration of political and economic power.

1959–1960: anger from exporting countries
In February 1959, as new supplies were becoming available, the multinational oil companies (MOCs) unilaterally reduced their posted prices for Venezuelan and Middle Eastern crude oil by 10 percent. Weeks later, the Arab League's first Arab Petroleum Congress convened in Cairo, Egypt, where the influential journalist Wanda Jablonski introduced Saudi Arabia's Abdullah Tariki to Venezuela's observer Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, representing the two then-largest oil-producing nations outside the United States and the Soviet Union. Both oil ministers were angered by the price cuts, and the two led their fellow delegates to establish the Maadi Pact or Gentlemen's Agreement, calling for an "Oil Consultation Commission" of exporting countries, to which MOCs should present price-change plans. Jablonski reported a marked hostility toward the West and a growing outcry against "absentee landlordism" of the MOCs, which at the time controlled all oil operations within the exporting countries and wielded enormous political influence. In August 1960, ignoring the warnings, and with the US favoring Canadian and Mexican oil for strategic reasons, the MOCs again unilaterally announced significant cuts in their posted prices for Middle Eastern crude oil.

1960–1975: founding and expansion
The following month, during 10–14 September 1960, the Baghdad Conference was held at the initiative of Tariki, Pérez Alfonzo, and Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, whose country had skipped the 1959 congress. Government representatives from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela met in Baghdad to discuss ways to increase the price of crude oil produced by their countries, and ways to respond to unilateral actions by the MOCs. Despite strong US opposition: "Together with Arab and non-Arab producers, Saudi Arabia formed the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries (OPEC) to secure the best price available from the major oil corporations." The Middle Eastern members originally called for OPEC headquarters to be in Baghdad or Beirut, but Venezuela argued for a neutral location, and so the organization chose Geneva, Switzerland. On 1 September 1965, OPEC moved to Vienna, Austria, after Switzerland declined to extend diplomatic privileges. At the time, Switzerland was attempting to reduce their foreign population and the OPEC was the first intergovernmental body to leave the country because of restrictions on foreigners. Austria was keen to attract international organizations and offered attractive terms to the OPEC.

During the early years of OPEC, the oil-producing countries had a 50/50 profit agreement with the oil companies. OPEC bargained with the dominant oil companies (the Seven Sisters), but OPEC faced coordination problems among its members. If one OPEC member demanded too much from the oil companies, then the oil companies could slow down production in that country and ramp up production elsewhere. The 50/50 agreements were still in place until 1970 when Libya negotiated a 58/42 agreement with the oil company Occidental, which prompted other OPEC members to request better agreements with oil companies.> In 1971, an accord was signed between major oil companies and members of OPEC doing business in the Mediterranean Sea region, called the Tripoli Agreement. The agreement, signed on 2 April 1971, raised oil prices and increased producing countries' profit shares.

During 1961–1975, the five founding nations were joined by Qatar (1961), Indonesia (1962–2008, rejoined 2014–2016), Libya (1962), United Arab Emirates (originally just the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, 1967), Algeria (1969), Nigeria (1971), Ecuador (1973–1992, 2007–2020), and Gabon (1975–1994, rejoined 2016). By the early 1970s, OPEC's membership accounted for more than half of worldwide oil production. Indicating that OPEC is not averse to further expansion, Mohammed Barkindo, OPEC's acting secretary general in 2006, urged his African neighbors Angola and Sudan to join, and Angola did in 2007, followed by Equatorial Guinea in 2017. Since the 1980s, representatives from Canada, Egypt, Mexico, Norway, Oman, Russia, and other oil-exporting nations have attended many OPEC meetings as observers, as an informal mechanism for coordinating policies.

1973–1974: oil embargo
The oil market was tight in the early 1970s, which reduced the risks for OPEC members in nationalising their oil production. One of the major fears for OPEC members was that nationalisation would cause a steep decline in the price of oil. This prompted a wave of nationalisations in countries such as Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. With greater control over oil production decisions and amid high oil prices, OPEC members unilaterally raised oil prices in 1973, prompting the 1973 oil crisis.

In October 1973, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab majority of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) declared significant production cuts and an oil embargo against the United States and other industrialized nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. A previous embargo attempt was largely ineffective in response to the Six-Day War in 1967. However, in 1973, the result was a sharp rise in oil prices and OPEC revenues, from US$3/bbl to US$12/bbl, and an emergency period of energy rationing, intensified by panic reactions, a declining trend in US oil production, currency devaluations, and a lengthy UK coal-miners dispute. For a time, the UK imposed an emergency three-day workweek. Seven European nations banned non-essential Sunday driving. US gas stations limited the amount of petrol that could be dispensed, closed on Sundays, and restricted the days when petrol could be purchased, based on number plate numbers. Even after the embargo ended in March 1974, following intense diplomatic activity, prices continued to rise. The world experienced a global economic recession, with unemployment and inflation surging simultaneously, steep declines in stock and bond prices, major shifts in trade balances and petrodollar flows, and a dramatic end to the post-WWII economic boom.

The 1973–1974 oil embargo had lasting effects on the United States and other industrialized nations, which established the International Energy Agency in response, as well as national emergency stockpiles designed to withstand months of future supply disruptions. Oil conservation efforts included lower speed limits on highways, smaller and more energy-efficient cars and appliances, year-round daylight saving time, reduced usage of heating and air-conditioning, better building insulation, increased support of mass transit, and greater emphasis on coal, natural gas, ethanol, nuclear and other alternative energy sources. These long-term efforts became effective enough that US oil consumption rose only 11 percent during 1980–2014, while real GDP rose 150 percent. But in the 1970s, OPEC nations demonstrated convincingly that their oil could be used as both a political and economic weapon against other nations, at least in the short term.

The embargo also meant that a section of the Non-Aligned Movement saw power as a source of hope for their developing countries. The Algerian president Houari Boumédiène expressed this hope in a speech at the UN's sixth Special Session, in April 1974:

"The OPEC action is really the first illustration and at the same time the most concrete and most spectacular illustration of the importance of raw material prices for our countries, the vital need for the producing countries to operate the levers of price control, and lastly, the great possibilities of a union of raw material producing countries. This action should be viewed by the developing countries as an example and a source of hope."

1975–1980: Special Fund, now the OPEC Fund for International Development
OPEC's international aid activities date from well before the 1973–1974 oil price surge. For example, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development has operated since 1961.

In the years after 1973, as an example of so-called "checkbook diplomacy", certain Arab nations have been among the world's largest providers of foreign aid, and OPEC added to its goals the selling of oil for the socio-economic growth of poorer nations. The OPEC Special Fund was conceived in Algiers, Algeria, in March 1975, and was formally established the following January. "A Solemn Declaration 'reaffirmed the natural solidarity which unites OPEC countries with other developing countries in their struggle to overcome underdevelopment,' and called for measures to strengthen cooperation between these countries... [The OPEC Special Fund's] resources are additional to those already made available by OPEC states through a number of bilateral and multilateral channels." The Fund became an official international development agency in May 1980 and was renamed the OPEC Fund for International Development, with Permanent Observer status at the United Nations. In 2020, the institution ceased using the abbreviation OFID.

1975: hostage siege
On 21 December 1975, Saudi Arabia's Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Iran's Jamshid Amuzegar, and the other OPEC oil ministers were taken hostage at their semi-annual conference in Vienna, Austria. The attack, which killed three non-ministers, was orchestrated by a six-person team led by Venezuelan terrorist "Carlos the Jackal", and which included Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann and Hans-Joachim Klein. The self-named "Arm of the Arab Revolution" group declared its goal to be the liberation of Palestine. Carlos planned to take over the conference by force and hold for ransom all eleven attending oil ministers, except for Yamani and Amuzegar who were to be executed.

Carlos arranged bus and plane travel for his team and 42 of the original 63 hostages, with stops in Algiers and Tripoli, planning to fly eventually to Baghdad, where Yamani and Amuzegar were to be killed. All 30 non-Arab hostages were released in Algiers, excluding Amuzegar. Additional hostages were released at another stop in Tripoli before returning to Algiers. With only 10 hostages remaining, Carlos held a phone conversation with Algerian president Houari Boumédiène, who informed Carlos that the oil ministers' deaths would result in an attack on the plane. Boumédienne must also have offered Carlos asylum at this time and possibly financial compensation for failing to complete his assignment. Carlos expressed his regret at not being able to murder Yamani and Amuzegar, then he and his comrades left the plane. All the hostages and terrorists walked away from the situation, two days after it began.

Sometime after the attack, Carlos's accomplices revealed that the operation was commanded by Wadie Haddad, a founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They also claimed that the idea and funding came from an Arab president, widely thought to be Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, itself an OPEC member. Fellow militants Bassam Abu Sharif and Klein claimed that Carlos received and kept a ransom between 20 million and US$50 million from "an Arab president". Carlos claimed that Saudi Arabia paid ransom on behalf of Iran, but that the money was "diverted en route and lost by the Revolution". He was finally captured in 1994 and is serving life sentences for at least 16 other murders.

1979–1980: oil crisis and 1980s oil glut
In response to a wave of oil nationalizations and the high prices of the 1970s, industrial nations took steps to reduce their dependence on OPEC oil, especially after prices reached new peaks approaching US$40/bbl in 1979–1980 when the Iranian Revolution and Iran–Iraq War disrupted regional stability and oil supplies. Electric utilities worldwide switched from oil to coal, natural gas, or nuclear power; national governments initiated multibillion-dollar research programs to develop alternatives to oil; and commercial exploration developed major non-OPEC oilfields in Siberia, Alaska, the North Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. By 1986, daily worldwide demand for oil dropped by 5 million barrels, non-OPEC production rose by an even-larger amount, and OPEC's market share sank from approximately 50 percent in 1979 to less than 30 percent in 1985. Illustrating the volatile multi-year timeframes of typical market cycles for natural resources, the result was a six-year decline in the price of oil, which culminated by plunging more than half in 1986 alone. As one oil analyst summarized succinctly: "When the price of something as essential as oil spikes, humanity does two things: finds more of it and finds ways to use less of it."

To combat falling revenue from oil sales, in 1982 Saudi Arabia pressed OPEC for audited national production quotas in an attempt to limit output and boost prices. When other OPEC nations failed to comply, Saudi Arabia first slashed its own production from 10 million barrels daily in 1979–1981 to just one-third of that level in 1985. When even this proved ineffective, Saudi Arabia reversed course and flooded the market with cheap oil, causing prices to fall below US$10/bbl and higher-cost producers to become unprofitable.

These strategic measures by Saudi Arabia to regulate oil prices had profound economic repercussions. As the swing producer in that period, the Kingdom faced significant economic strain. Its revenues dramatically decreased from $119 billion in 1981 to $26 billion by 1985, leading to substantial budget deficits and a doubling of its debt, reaching 100% of the Gross Domestic Product.

Faced with increasing economic hardship (which ultimately contributed to the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989), the "free-riding" oil exporters that had previously failed to comply with OPEC agreements finally began to limit production to shore up prices, based on painstakingly negotiated national quotas that sought to balance oil-related and economic criteria since 1986. (Within their sovereign-controlled territories, the national governments of OPEC members are able to impose production limits on both government-owned and private oil companies.) Generally when OPEC production targets are reduced, oil prices increase.

1990–2003: ample supply and modest disruptions

Leading up to his August 1990 Invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was pushing OPEC to end overproduction and to send oil prices higher, in order to help OPEC members financially and to accelerate rebuilding from the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War. But these two Iraqi wars against fellow OPEC founders marked a low point in the cohesion of the organization, and oil prices subsided quickly after the short-term supply disruptions. The September 2001 Al Qaeda attacks on the US and the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq had even milder short-term impacts on oil prices, as Saudi Arabia and other exporters again cooperated to keep the world adequately supplied.

In the 1990s, OPEC lost its two newest members, who had joined in the mid-1970s. Ecuador withdrew in December 1992, because it was unwilling to pay the annual US$2 million membership fee and felt that it needed to produce more oil than it was allowed under the OPEC quota, although it rejoined in October 2007. Similar concerns prompted Gabon to suspend membership in January 1995; it rejoined in July 2016. Iraq has remained a member of OPEC since the organization's founding, but Iraqi production was not a part of OPEC quota agreements from 1998 to 2016, due to the country's daunting political difficulties.

Lower demand triggered by the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis saw the price of oil fall back to 1986 levels. After oil slumped to around US$10/bbl, joint diplomacy achieved a gradual slowing of oil production by OPEC, Mexico and Norway. After prices slumped again in Nov. 2001, OPEC, Norway, Mexico, Russia, Oman and Angola agreed to cut production on 1 January 2002 for 6 months. OPEC contributed 1.5 million barrels a day (mbpd) to the approximately 2 mbpd of cuts announced.

In June 2003, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and OPEC held their first joint workshop on energy issues. They have continued to meet regularly since then, "to collectively better understand trends, analysis and viewpoints and advance market transparency and predictability."

2003–2011: volatility
Widespread insurgency and sabotage occurred during the 2003–2008 height of the American occupation of Iraq, coinciding with rapidly increasing oil demand from China and commodity-hungry investors, recurring violence against the Nigerian oil industry, and dwindling spare capacity as a cushion against potential shortages. This combination of forces prompted a sharp rise in oil prices to levels far higher than those previously targeted by OPEC. Price volatility reached an extreme in 2008, as WTI crude oil surged to a record US$147/bbl in July and then plunged back to US$32/bbl in December, during the worst global recession since World War II. OPEC's annual oil export revenue also set a new record in 2008, estimated around US$1 trillion, and reached similar annual rates in 2011–2014 (along with extensive petrodollar recycling activity) before plunging again. By the time of the 2011 Libyan Civil War and Arab Spring, OPEC started issuing explicit statements to counter "excessive speculation" in oil futures markets, blaming financial speculators for increasing volatility beyond market fundamentals.

In May 2008, Indonesia announced that it would leave OPEC when its membership expired at the end of that year, having become a net importer of oil and being unable to meet its production quota. A statement released by OPEC on 10 September 2008 confirmed Indonesia's withdrawal, noting that OPEC "regretfully accepted the wish of Indonesia to suspend its full membership in the organization, and recorded its hope that the country would be in a position to rejoin the organization in the not-too-distant future."

2008: production dispute
The differing economic needs of OPEC member states often affect the internal debates behind OPEC production quotas. Poorer members have pushed for production cuts from fellow members, to increase the price of oil and thus their own revenues. These proposals conflict with Saudi Arabia's stated long-term strategy of being a partner with the world's economic powers to ensure a steady flow of oil that would support economic expansion. Part of the basis for this policy is the Saudi concern that overly expensive oil or unreliable supply will drive industrial nations to conserve energy and develop alternative fuels, curtailing the worldwide demand for oil and eventually leaving unneeded barrels in the ground. To this point, Saudi Oil Minister Yamani famously remarked in 1973: "The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones." To elucidate Saudi Arabia's contemporary approach, in 2024, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman articulated a stance that reflects how the kingdom has adapted to the evolving economic needs within OPEC and the broader international community. Emphasizing the need for a balanced and fair global energy transition, he highlighted the importance of diversifying energy sources and noted significant investments in natural gas, petrochemicals, and renewables. These efforts support economic development in emerging countries and align with global climate objectives. Additionally, he addressed shifting energy security concerns, stating, "Energy security in the 70s, 80s, and 90s was more dependent on oil. Now, you get what happened last year... It was gas. The future problem on energy security will not be oil. It will be renewables. And the materials, and the mines."

On 10 September 2008, with oil prices still near US$100/bbl, a production dispute occurred when the Saudis reportedly walked out of a negotiating session where rival members voted to reduce OPEC output. Although Saudi delegates officially endorsed the new quotas, they stated anonymously that they would not observe them. The New York Times quoted one such delegate as saying: "Saudi Arabia will meet the market's demand. We will see what the market requires and we will not leave a customer without oil. The policy has not changed." Over the next few months, oil prices plummeted into the $30s, and did not return to $100 until the Libyan Civil War in 2011.

2014–2017: oil glut

During 2014–2015, OPEC members consistently exceeded their production ceiling, and China experienced a slowdown in economic growth. At the same time, US oil production nearly doubled from 2008 levels and approached the world-leading "swing producer" volumes of Saudi Arabia and Russia, due to the substantial long-term improvement and spread of shale "fracking" technology in response to the years of record oil prices. These developments led in turn to a plunge in US oil import requirements (moving closer to energy independence), a record volume of worldwide oil inventories, and a collapse in oil prices that continued into early 2016.

In spite of global oversupply, on 27 November 2014 in Vienna, Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi blocked appeals from poorer OPEC members for production cuts to support prices. Naimi argued that the oil market should be left to rebalance itself competitively at lower price levels, strategically rebuilding OPEC's long-term market share by ending the profitability of high-cost US shale oil production. As he explained in an interview:

"Is it reasonable for a highly efficient producer to reduce output, while the producer of poor efficiency continues to produce? That is crooked logic. If I reduce, what happens to my market share? The price will go up and the Russians, the Brazilians, US shale oil producers will take my share... We want to tell the world that high-efficiency producing countries are the ones that deserve market share. That is the operative principle in all capitalist countries... One thing is for sure: Current prices [roughly US$60/bbl] do not support all producers."

A year later, when OPEC met in Vienna on 4 December 2015, the organization had exceeded its production ceiling for 18 consecutive months, US oil production had declined only slightly from its peak, world markets appeared to be oversupplied by at least 2 million barrels per day despite war-torn Libya pumping 1 million barrels below capacity, oil producers were making major adjustments to withstand prices as low as $40, Indonesia was rejoining the export organization, Iraqi production had surged after years of disorder, Iranian output was poised to rebound with the lifting of international sanctions, hundreds of world leaders at the Paris Climate Agreement were committing to limit carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and solar technologies were becoming steadily more competitive and prevalent. In light of all these market pressures, OPEC decided to set aside its ineffective production ceiling until the next ministerial conference in June 2016. By 20 January 2016, the OPEC Reference Basket was down to US$22.48/bbl – less than one-fourth of its high from June 2014 ($110.48), less than one-sixth of its record from July 2008 ($140.73), and back below the April 2003 starting point ($23.27) of its historic run-up.

As 2016 continued, the oil glut was partially trimmed with significant production offline in the United States, Canada, Libya, Nigeria and China, and the basket price gradually rose back into the $40s. OPEC regained a modest percentage of market share, saw the cancellation of many competing drilling projects, maintained the status quo at its June conference, and endorsed "prices at levels that are suitable for both producers and consumers", although many producers were still experiencing serious economic difficulties.

2017–2020: production cut and OPEC+
As OPEC members grew weary of a multi-year supply-contest with diminishing returns and shrinking financial reserves, the organization finally attempted its first production cut since 2008. Despite many political obstacles, a September 2016 decision to trim approximately 1 million barrels per day was codified by a new quota-agreement at the November 2016 OPEC conference. The agreement (which exempted disruption-ridden members Libya and Nigeria) covered the first half of 2017 – alongside promised reductions from Russia and ten other non-members, offset by expected increases in the US shale-sector, Libya, Nigeria, spare capacity, and surging late-2016 OPEC production before the cuts took effect. Indonesia announced another "temporary suspension" of its OPEC membership rather than accepting the organization's requested 5-percent production-cut. Prices fluctuated around US$50/bbl, and in May 2017 OPEC decided to extend the new quotas through March 2018, with the world waiting to see if and how the oil-inventory glut might be fully siphoned-off by then. Longtime oil analyst Daniel Yergin "described the relationship between OPEC and shale as 'mutual coexistence', with both sides learning to live with prices that are lower than they would like." These production cut deals with non-OPEC countries are generally referred to as OPEC+.

In December 2017, Russia and OPEC agreed to extend the production cut of 1.8 mbpd until the end of 2018.

Qatar announced it would withdraw from OPEC effective 1 January 2019. According to the New York Times, this was a strategic response to the Qatar diplomatic crisis which Qatar was involved with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt.

On 29 June 2019, Russia again agreed with Saudi Arabia to extend by six to nine months the original production cuts of 2018.

In October 2019, Ecuador announced it would withdraw from OPEC on 1 January 2020 due to financial problems facing the country.

In December 2019, OPEC and Russia agreed one of the deepest output cuts so far to prevent oversupply in a deal that will last for the first three months of 2020.

2020: Saudi-Russian price war
In early March 2020, OPEC officials presented an ultimatum to Russia to cut production by 1.5% of world supply. Russia, which foresaw continuing cuts as American shale oil production increased, rejected the demand, ending the three-year partnership between OPEC and major non-OPEC providers. Another factor was weakening global demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This also resulted in 'OPEC plus' failing to extend the agreement cutting 2.1 million barrels per day that was set to expire at the end of March. Saudi Arabia, which has absorbed a disproportionate amount of the cuts to convince Russia to stay in the agreement, notified its buyers on 7 March that they would raise output and discount their oil in April. This prompted a Brent crude price crash of more than 30% before a slight recovery and widespread turmoil in financial markets.

Several pundits saw this as a Saudi-Russian price war, or game of chicken which cause the "other side to blink first". Saudi Arabia had in March 2020 $500 billion of foreign exchange reserves, while at that time Russia's reserves were $580 billion. The debt-to-GDP ratio of the Saudis was 25%, while the Russian ratio was 15%. Another remarked that the Saudis can produce oil at as low a price as $3 per barrel, whereas Russia needs $30 per barrel to cover production costs. "To Russia, this price war is more than just about regaining market share for oil," one analyst claims. "It’s about assaulting the Western economy, especially America’s." In order to ward of from the oil exporters price war which can make shale oil production uneconomical, US may protect its crude oil market share by passing the NOPEC bill. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, represented by Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, maintains a conciliatory stance towards the U.S. shale industry. He clarified that harming this sector was never their intention, stating, "I made it clear that it was not on our radar or our intention to create any type of damage to their industry... they will rise again from the ashes and thrive and prosper." He also noted that Saudi Arabia is looking forward to a time when U.S. producers thrive once again in a market with higher oil demand."

In April 2020, OPEC and a group of other oil producers, including Russia, agreed to extend production cuts until the end of July. The cartel and its allies agreed to cut oil production in May and June by 9.7 million barrels a day, equal to around 10% of global output, in an effort to prop up prices, which had previously fallen to record lows.

2021: Saudi-Emirati dispute
In July 2021, OPEC+ member United Arab Emirates rejected a Saudi proposed eight-month extension to oil output curbs which was in place due to COVID-19 and lower oil consumption. The previous year, OPEC+ cut the equivalent of about 10% of demand at the time. The UAE asked for the maximum amount of oil the group would recognize the country of producing to be raised to 3.8 million barrels a day compared to its previous 3.2 million barrels. A compromise deal allowed UAE to increase its maximum oil output to 3.65 million barrels a day.

Under the terms of the agreement, Russia would increase its production from 11 million barrels to 11.5 million by May 2022 as well. All members would increase output by 400,000 barrels per day each month starting in August to gradually offset the previous cuts made due to the COVID pandemic. This compromise, achieved where Saudi Arabia met the United Arab Emirates halfway, underscored OPEC+ unity. UAE Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei thanked Saudi Arabia and Russia for facilitating dialogue leading to an agreement. He stated, "The UAE is committed to this group and will always work with it." On the Saudi side, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman emphasized consensus building and stated that the agreement strengthens OPEC+'s ties and ensures its continuity.

2021–present global energy crisis
The record-high energy prices were driven by a global surge in demand as the world quit the economic recession caused by COVID-19, particularly due to strong energy demand in Asia. In August 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan released a statement calling on OPEC+ to boost oil production to "offset previous production cuts that OPEC+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022." On 28 September 2021, Sullivan met in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss the high oil prices. The price of oil was about US$80 by October 2021,  the highest since 2014. President Joe Biden and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm blamed the OPEC+ for rising oil and gas prices.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has altered the global oil trade. EU leaders tried to ban the majority of Russian crude imports, but even prior to the official action imports to Northwest Europe were down. More Russian oil is now sold outside of Europe, more specifically to India and China.

In October 2022, key OPEC+ ministers agreed to oil production cuts of 2 million barrels per day, the first production cut since 2020. This led to renewed interest in the passage of NOPEC.

2022: oil production cut
In October 2022, OPEC+ led by Saudi Arabia announced a large cut to its oil output target in order to aid Russia. In response, US President Joe Biden vowed "consequences" and said the US government would "re-evaluate" the longstanding U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia. Robert Menendez, the Democratic chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called for a freeze on cooperation with and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, accusing the kingdom of helping Russia underwrite its war with Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry stated that the OPEC+ decision was "purely economic" and taken unanimously by all members of the conglomerate, pushing back on pressure to change its stance on the Russo-Ukrainian War at the UN. In response, the White House accused Saudi Arabia of pressuring other OPEC nations into agreeing with the production cut, some of which felt coerced, saying the United States had presented the Saudi government with an analysis showing there was no market basis for the cut. United States National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Saudi government knew the decision will "increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions" against Moscow, rejecting the Saudi claim that the move was "purely economic". According to a report in The Intercept, sources and experts said that Saudi Arabia had sought even deeper cuts than Russia, saying Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to sway the 2022 United States elections in favor of the GOP and the 2024 United States presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. In contrast, Saudi officials maintain that their decision to reduce oil production was driven by concerns over the global economy, not political motivations. They state that the cuts were a response to the global economic situation and low inventories, which could trigger a rally in oil prices. Saudi Arabia affirms its actions by emphasizing its strategic partnership with the U.S., focusing on peace, security, and prosperity.

In 2023, the IEA predicted that demand for fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal would reach an all-time high by 2030. OPEC rejected the IEA's forecast, saying "what makes such predictions so dangerous, is that they are often accompanied by calls to stop investing in new oil and gas projects."

Current member countries
As of January 2024, OPEC has 12 member countries: five in the Middle East (West Asia), six in Africa, and one in South America. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), OPEC's combined rate of oil production (including gas condensate) represented 44% of the world's total in 2016, and OPEC accounted for 81.5% of the world's "proven" oil reserves. Subsequent reports from 2022 indicate that OPEC member countries were then responsible for about 38% of total world crude oil production. It is also estimated that these countries hold 79.5% of the globe's proven oil reserves, with the Middle East alone accounting for 67.2% of OPEC's reserves.

Approval of a new member country requires agreement by three-quarters of OPEC's existing members, including all five of the founders. In October 2015, Sudan formally submitted an application to join, but it is not yet a member.

OPEC+
A number of non-OPEC member countries also participate in the organisation's initiatives such as voluntary supply cuts in order to further bind policy objectives between OPEC and non-OPEC members. This loose grouping of countries, known as OPEC+, includes Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, South Sudan and Sudan.

The collaboration among OPEC+ member countries has led to the establishment of the Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) in 2017, which has been subsequently extended multiple times due to its remarkable success. The DoC serves as a framework for cooperation and coordination between OPEC and non-OPEC countries. Additionally, OPEC+ members engage in further cooperative efforts through the Charter of Cooperation (CoC), which provides a platform for long-term collaboration. The CoC facilitates dialogue and the exchange of views on global oil and energy market conditions, with the overarching goal of ensuring a secure energy supply and fostering lasting stability that benefits producers, consumers, investors, and the global economy.

Observers
Since the 1980s, representatives from Canada, Egypt, Mexico, Norway, Oman, Russia, and other oil-exporting nations have attended many OPEC meetings as observers. This arrangement serves as an informal mechanism for coordinating policies.

Lapsed members
For countries that export petroleum at relatively low volume, their limited negotiating power as OPEC members would not necessarily justify the burdens imposed by OPEC production quotas and membership costs. Ecuador withdrew from OPEC in December 1992, because it was unwilling to pay the annual US$2 million membership fee and felt that it needed to produce more oil than it was allowed under its OPEC quota at the time. Ecuador then rejoined in October 2007 before leaving again in January 2020. Ecuador's Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources released an official statement on 2 January 2020 which confirmed that Ecuador had left OPEC. Similar concerns prompted Gabon to suspend membership in January 1995; it rejoined in July 2016.

In May 2008, Indonesia announced that it would leave OPEC when its membership expired at the end of that year, having become a net importer of oil and being unable to meet its production quota. It rejoined the organization in January 2016, but announced another "temporary suspension" of its membership at year-end when OPEC requested a 5% production cut.

Qatar left OPEC on 1 January 2019, after joining the organization in 1961, to focus on natural gas production, of which it is the world's largest exporter in the form of liquified natural gas (LNG).

In an OPEC meeting in November 2023, Nigeria and Angola, the biggest oil producers in Sub-Saharan Africa, expressed their discontent over OPEC's quotas which, according to them, blocked their efforts to ramp up oil production and boost their foreign reserves. In December 2023, Angola announced it was leaving the OPEC because it disagreed with the organization's production quotas scheme.

Market information
As one area in which OPEC members have been able to cooperate productively over the decades, the organisation has significantly improved the quality and quantity of information available about the international oil market. This is especially helpful for a natural-resource industry whose smooth functioning requires months and years of careful planning.

Publications and research
In April 2001, OPEC collaborated with five other international organizations (APEC, Eurostat, IEA,, UNSD) to improve the availability and reliability of oil data. They launched the Joint Oil Data Exercise, which in 2005 was joined by IEF and renamed the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI), covering more than 90% of the global oil market. GECF joined as an eighth partner in 2014, enabling JODI also to cover nearly 90% of the global market for natural gas.

Since 2007, OPEC has published the "World Oil Outlook" (WOO) annually, in which it presents a comprehensive analysis of the global oil industry including medium- and long-term projections for supply and demand. OPEC also produces an "Annual Statistical Bulletin" (ASB), and publishes more-frequent updates in its "Monthly Oil Market Report" (MOMR) and "OPEC Bulletin".

Crude oil benchmarks
A "crude oil benchmark" is a standardized petroleum product that serves as a convenient reference price for buyers and sellers of crude oil, including standardized contracts in major futures markets since 1983. Benchmarks are used because oil prices differ (usually by a few dollars per barrel) based on variety, grade, delivery date and location, and other legal requirements.

The OPEC Reference Basket of Crudes has been an important benchmark for oil prices since 2000. It is calculated as a weighted average of prices for petroleum blends from the OPEC member countries: Saharan Blend (Algeria), Girassol (Angola), Djeno (Republic of the Congo) Rabi Light (Gabon), Iran Heavy (Islamic Republic of Iran), Basra Light (Iraq), Kuwait Export (Kuwait), Es Sider (Libya), Bonny Light (Nigeria), Arab Light (Saudi Arabia), Murban (UAE), and Merey (Venezuela).

North Sea Brent Crude Oil is the leading benchmark for Atlantic basin crude oils and is used to price approximately two-thirds of the world's traded crude oil. Other well-known benchmarks are West Texas Intermediate (WTI), Dubai Crude, Oman Crude, and Urals oil.

[[File:Oil price benchmarks.webp|thumb|300px|

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Spare capacity
The US Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the US Department of Energy, defines spare capacity for crude oil market management "as the volume of production that can be brought on within 30 days and sustained for at least 90 days ... OPEC spare capacity provides an indicator of the world oil market's ability to respond to potential crises that reduce oil supplies."

In November 2014, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that OPEC's "effective" spare capacity, adjusted for ongoing disruptions in countries like Libya and Nigeria, was 3.5 Moilbbl/d and that this number would increase to a peak in 2017 of 4.6 Moilbbl/d. By November 2015, the IEA changed its assessment "with OPEC's spare production buffer stretched thin, as Saudi Arabia – which holds the lion's share of excess capacity – and its [Persian] Gulf neighbours pump at near-record rates."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: OPEC


text:
Sides of an equation

In mathematics, LHS is informal shorthand for the left-hand side of an equation. Similarly, RHS is the right-hand side. The two sides have the same value, expressed differently, since equality is symmetric.

More generally, these terms may apply to an inequation or inequality; the right-hand side is everything on the right side of a test operator in an expression, with LHS defined similarly.

Example
The expression on the right side of the "=" sign is the right side of the equation and the expression on the left of the "=" is the left side of the equation.

For example, in
 * $$ x + 5 = y + 8 $$

$x + 5$ is the left-hand side (LHS) and $y + 8$ is the right-hand side (RHS).

Homogeneous and inhomogeneous equations
In solving mathematical equations, particularly linear simultaneous equations, differential equations and integral equations, the terminology homogeneous is often used for equations with some linear operator L on the LHS and 0 on the RHS. In contrast, an equation with a non-zero RHS is called inhomogeneous or non-homogeneous, as exemplified by

 * Lf = g,

with g a fixed function, which equation is to be solved for f. Then any solution of the inhomogeneous equation may have a solution of the homogeneous equation added to it, and still remain a solution.

For example in mathematical physics, the homogeneous equation may correspond to a physical theory formulated in empty space, while the inhomogeneous equation asks for more 'realistic' solutions with some matter, or charged particles.

Syntax
More abstractly, when using infix notation

 * T * U

the term T stands as the left-hand side and U as the right-hand side of the operator *. This usage is less common, though.

title: Sides of an equation


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Barotropic vorticity equation

The barotropic vorticity equation assumes the atmosphere is nearly barotropic, which means that the direction and speed of the geostrophic wind are independent of height. In other words, there is no vertical wind shear of the geostrophic wind. It also implies that thickness contours (a proxy for temperature) are parallel to upper level height contours. In this type of atmosphere, high and low pressure areas are centers of warm and cold temperature anomalies. Warm-core highs (such as the subtropical ridge and the Bermuda-Azores high) and cold-core lows have strengthening winds with height, with the reverse true for cold-core highs (shallow Arctic highs) and warm-core lows (such as tropical cyclones).

A simplified form of the vorticity equation for an inviscid, divergence-free flow (solenoidal velocity field), the barotropic vorticity equation can simply be stated as

 * $$\frac{D \eta}{D t} = 0,$$

where $D⁄Dt$ is the material derivative and

 * $$\eta = \zeta + f$$

is absolute vorticity, with ζ being relative vorticity, defined as the vertical component of the curl of the fluid velocity and f is the Coriolis parameter

 * $$f = 2 \Omega \sin \varphi,$$

where Ω is the angular frequency of the planet's rotation (Ω = $0.727 s^{−1}$ for the earth) and φ is latitude.

In terms of relative vorticity, the equation can be rewritten as

 * $$\frac{D \zeta}{D t} = -v \beta,$$

where β = $∂f⁄∂y$ is the variation of the Coriolis parameter with distance y in the north–south direction and v is the component of velocity in this direction.

In 1950, Charney, Fjørtoft, and von Neumann integrated this equation (with an added diffusion term on the right-hand side) on a computer for the first time, using an observed field of 500 hPa geopotential height for the first timestep. This was one of the first successful instances of numerical weather prediction.

title: Barotropic vorticity equation


text:
User talk:Plasticlax

question: Can anyone edit my user page?

Yes! --zeno 06:46 Jan 7, 2003 (UTC) This does not mean they should. But it is possible. If you want, you can move my 2 messages to the talk page ;-). --zeno 01:49 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

IS NOTHING SACRED!?

then how does this differ from the talk about this page, really?

Intuitively, you'd think that only the user should be allowed to edit his or her own page. If folks discussed issues on my user page, I'd be moving them to my talk page, but obviously your questions have invited discussion on your user page beyond a profile of you and your interests.

 * i guess it makes sense. this way nobody can write a biased story of themselves any more than they can write a biased article, in the sense that someone will correct it...

your John Rawls page refers to the veil of ignorance thought experiment. is this the same as the Original Position? If so, i will create a page for said experiment and link yours to it? (I am new here, is this appropriate, or should I just do it -- is a user automatically notified when changes are made to a page s/he has authored?)

Hello,

Thanks for the email. Normal practice in the 'pedia is to collaborate via users' talk pages. You should be able to reach mine by clicking on the link to me in an article history (to reach my user page) and then clicking on its link 'discuss this page' to get to my talk page. I then get alerted when I next login to wikipedia.

Other possibilities are to set a watch on an article, or to examine user contributions for yourself (once you have logged in). In the resulting display articles for which you are the most recent maintainer are marked (top), those not marked top have been since modified by someone else.

The answer to your question, is that I believe so but am not completely certain. I have not read Rawls, though I have read various commentaries especially Stephen Holmes. My contributions to the article were mainly a copy edit of a rather vague original when he died.

I hope you decide to stay around in wikipedia. I have found it a very stimulating project since arriving four months ago.

If you decide to login and create a user page and user talk page of your own, then it would be courteous to copy this email to your talk page.

- alan
 * Thanks, Plasticlax, for including the above email from me -- Alan Peakall 12:38 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

Welcome Plasticlax. What's your nick mean? It's nice to see another contributor to LDS-related articles. B

the nick has no meaning. its just my oldest one. I have an interest in LDS issues, yes, though i hope to do more than just bring the lds apologetics arena here. (though here they may recieve a fairer treatement). anyway, my interests are in many areas, and though i'm not a scholar, I think i can help clarify and flesh out articles and make complex things comprehendable to the average person like me...

Plasticlax, have you had any background in home-schooling? Also, make three or four tildes ("~") at the end of your post to auto sign your ID. B 05:24 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

No, only that I've seen it work very well in some cases and only kinda well in others (but no worse than public education in any case). I mostly saw it in action in Alaska, where it is well-supported by the government as far as i know -Plasticlax

nice work on the Satyagraha page ! -Stevert

inferrence
Hello Plasticlax, I greatly appreciate your comment about the subjectivity of authors on the E-Prime discussion page. Judging from what you wrote there, you may greatly appreciate (or perhaps already have enjoyed) a book by Robert Anton Wilson called Quantum Psychology, which deals largely with that very issue in what seems to me an extremely thorough and relatively (relative to other writings that I've encountered dealing with this issue) easy to read. Anyway, I just thought that I ought to mention it to you. Thanks again for your insight. Matt V. 14:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:Plasticlax