The 2025 annual OPEC oil price stood at ***** U.S. dollars per barrel, as of May. This would be lower than the 2024 average, which amounted to ***** U.S. dollars. The abbreviation OPEC stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and includes Algeria, Angola, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the OPEC is to coordinate the oil policies of its member states. It was founded in 1960 in Baghdad, Iraq. The OPEC Reference Basket The OPEC crude oil price is defined by the price of the so-called OPEC (Reference) basket. This basket is an average of prices of the various petroleum blends that are produced by the OPEC members. Some of these oil blends are, for example: Saharan Blend from Algeria, Basra Light from Iraq, Arab Light from Saudi Arabia, BCF 17 from Venezuela, et cetera. By increasing and decreasing its oil production, OPEC tries to keep the price between a given maxima and minima. Benchmark crude oil The OPEC basket is one of the most important benchmarks for crude oil prices worldwide. Other significant benchmarks are UK Brent, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), and Dubai Crude (Fateh). Because there are many types and grades of oil, such benchmarks are indispensable for referencing them on the global oil market. The 2025 fall in prices was the result of weakened demand outlooks exacerbated by extensive U.S. trade tariffs.

These data were collected for a project investigating bidding behaviour in the electricity wholesale markets in England and Wales between 1996 and 2004, concentrating on the period between April 1999 and March 2001. This sub-period covered the last two years of the Electricity Pool of England and Wales, a compulsory centralised market which was abolished in favour of the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) based upon voluntary bilateral trading, as far as possible. Proponents of the change believed that the Pool had been subject to manipulation and would inevitably produce less competitive results than a more normal market.

This study comprised two parts: an in-depth investigation of bids made by individual stations, using existing industry data, and a high-level modelling exercise to simulate prices over the entire period, for which a new dataset of information on power stations, costs, and demand levels was collected. This dataset allowed the simulation of prices over the period, and to compare the simulations with actual prices. The principal investigators' hypothesis, supported by the results, was that if an unchanging simulation model provided a good fit to actual prices over the entire period, then the change in market rules did not affect the underlying relationship between market conditions and prices.

The statistics on which the new dataset was based were collected by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) and National Grid Transco.

Details of the project and links to publications may be found on the ESRC award web page.