OPEC Takes Aim At America

July 27, 2011
by John Myers


America is hostage to its need for oil.

Only once have I looked down the barrel of a gun. I can tell you it was damn disconcerting. It happened 25 years ago. The automatic rifles that were drawn on me then are pointed at America today. Yet President Barack Obama refuses to acknowledge that America is facing Middle Eastern guns.

In 1986, I traveled to Geneva to attend an emergency OPEC meeting. My father Vernon was in his early 70s but had lost none of the drive that shaped his youth as a reporter, which led him to found Oil Week Magazine and Myers Finance & Energy (MFE).

Vern was old school. While he had not changed from his reporting days, the world had. I got a sense of that when we pulled up to the hotel decked with machine gun-toting policemen.

My dad either didn’t notice the tight security at the hotel or he simply didn’t care. He asked the desk clerk, “Where’s the meeting?â€