We show that statistical tests of OPEC behavior have very low power across a wide range of alternative hypotheses regarding market structure. Consequently, it is difficult, given the current availability and precision of data on demand and costs, to distinguish collusive from competitive...

By convention, the petroleum industry relies on thermal equivalence to summarize the results of upstream oil and gas operations — measuring outputs in terms of barrels of “oil equivalent.” This despite the fact that the two commodities trade at nothing like thermal parity. Drawing on a...