We investigate the extent to which OPEC has succeeded in its self‐stated mission of stabilising the oil market and the implications for the world’s economy. We discuss the modelling framework developed by Pierru, Smith and Zamrik (2018) and Pierru, Smith and Almutairi (2020) and update their analyses. Unstabilised monthly oil prices that would have prevailed in the absence of OPEC’s spare capacity policy are determined for the September 2001–June 2020 period. Overall, OPEC’s management of spare capacity has significantly decreased the monthly volatility of the oil price. Three subperiods (commodity boom, market‐share campaign, OPEC+) can, however, be distinguished in terms of impact on price volatility. The annual value of OPEC’s spare capacity to the world’s economy is estimated to be 193.1 billion in 2019 US dollars.

Research Fellow Hossa is a research fellow at KAPSARC. She is also currently the Think20’s (T20’s) Sherpa and is leading T20 Saudi… Hossa is a research fellow at KAPSARC. She is also currently the Think20's (T20's) Sherpa and is leading T20 Saudi Arabia's secretariat. She is also the lead co-chair of T20 Saudi Arabia's task force "sustainable energy, water and food systems." Before joining KAPSARC, Hossa was a faculty member at the University of Wilfrid Laurier, Canada. Her research interests include developing energy and economic models to study the impact of energy and environmental policies on economies, sustainable development and wealth accounting. Her work aims to provide policymakers and practitioners with decision support tools that can help identify the challenges, opportunities, and solutions associated with moving toward sustainable energy and sustainable business practices. Her work has been published in many peer-reviewed journals. She has a Ph.D. and a master's degree in applied operations research from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a bachelor's degree in business administration from King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia.
Expertise
- Developing energy and economic models
- Analyzing the effects of various policies on an economy
- Applications of OR to climate change control policies
- Green supply chain management
- Large-scale optimization
- Convex relaxation and decomposition techniques and big data analytics in supply chains.
Publications See all Hossa Almutairi’s publications

Assessing Climate Mitigation Benefits of Public Support to CCS-EOR: An Economic Analysis
We investigate the extent to which OPEC has succeeded in its self‐stated mission of stabilising…
8th June 2023
Hard-linking a Top-down Economic Model with a Bottom-up Energy System for an Oil-exporting Country with Price Controls
We investigate the extent to which OPEC has succeeded in its self‐stated mission of stabilising…
7th January 2023