Letter to BS: Take advantage of slump in oil prices, shore up economy

The present stand-off between Russia and the OPEC is a kind of payback because it is going to seriously hit America's own shale gas programme

Your editorial “The oil crash” (March 10) rightly cautions the government that “the gai­ns from the sharp drop in crude prices will be temporary”. We have all seen the fi­ckle nature of crude prices. No one, barring the youngsters, has forgotten the time before the formation of the Or­ga­ni­sation of the Pe­t­roleum Ex­porting Co­un­tri­es (Opec) when the crude price used to be in single digits per barrel. Then ca­me the OPEC, and Saudi Ara­bia and other oil producers we­re tra­nsformed from poor desert folks to ow­ners of un­foreseen riches. Of course, American oil compa­nies ma­de huge gains too from their