I need Help on economic question about OPEC?

Question

Why might OPEC have trouble keeping the world’s market price of oil above that necessary to keep oil suppliers in business? What strategies might it use to try to do this?

Answer 1

Well perhaps if a inexpensive perfect substitute fuel was found for all of oil's uses they'd have trouble keeping the price high enough to keep in business.  That's never really going to be the case though, there's too many uses for petroleum.

If anything, they've historically just had trouble maintaining very high prices because one of their members breaks their quotas and starts selling all their reserves and max production.  That happens when the rewards of doing so are more than keeping prices high for a longer time.  Usually someone like Venezuela or Nigeria does it.