TOPIC : GS 2 Bilateral, Regional and Global Groupings and Agreements involving India and/or affecting India’s interests.
A compromise amid uncertainty
What is the news?
- For now, the risk has receded that the United Arab Emirates (UAE), said to hold the world’s largest untapped crude reserves
- It might quit the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
- The end to the UAE’s weeks-long impasse with Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s biggest crude exporters, and Russia, a nonOPEC state, was brought about by
- Under its terms, the UAE’s demand for an increase in its oil output quotas, in recognition of its higher production capacity, has been conceded.
- The baselines have also been raised for Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq and Kuwait.
The compromise deal
- The bloc will now step up crude production by 400,000 barrels a day starting in August.
- The deal will extend until the end of 2022.
- The output boost is in response to rising oil prices in the wake of the rebound in economic activity following the easing of lockdown restrictions and increased COVID-19 vaccinations in different parts of the world.
- Deal has also extended until the end of next year the broad terms of the unprecedented production cuts the bloc enforced in April 2020.
- The cartel cut oil production by 7 million barrels a day as oil demand fell from 100 mbd to 91.1 mbd and prices plummeted from $70 in January 2020 to around $20 in April.
- The bloc has since gradually rolled back these steep cuts and hopes to return production to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022.
- The UAE has played hard ball during the bloc’s attempts to deal with the pandemic-induced price volatility.
OPEC + Countries and Deal
- In December, when OPEC+ tried to ease production cuts, the UAE insisted that members who diluted the original output reductions should compensate through even steeper cuts, following its own example.
- While the internal rift has been resolved for now, the danger cannot be ruled out of an increasingly economically and politically assertive UAE flexing its muscle.
- Any potential break with the bloc would undoubtedly prove far more consequential for the OPEC than the 2019 exit of Qatar.
- Bilateral relations between the traditional allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have been especially strained since the UAE established diplomatic ties with Israel last year
- Withdrew troops from the Saudi-spearheaded war in Yemen the year before.
- A more recent arena of tension is the tariffs Riyadh has imposed on imports from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council.
- Saudi Arabia will now exclude from the GCC tariff agreement goods made by companies with a workforce of less than 25% of locals and industrial products with less than 40% of added value after their transformation process.
- Home to a predominantly migrant population, the move could hit the UAE especially hard.
Peak in oil demand
- The latest OPEC compromise echoes growing recognition of the delicate balance between competing domestic and global priorities.
- Foremost is their eagerness to maximise the returns on their substantial hydrocarbon resources, amid growing speculation of a peak in oil demand within sight.
- The OPEC, echoing other assessments, forecast in 2016 that a strict implementation of the Paris climate accord could see the demand for oil peak by 2030, owing to the proliferation of alternative fuels and electric cars.
- Conversely, its report last year pins hopes on population growth and expansion of the middle class for continued increase in oil demand.
Way Forward
- The International Energy Agency (IEA), which in 2016 forecast a continued rise in oil consumption until the 2040s, has more recently hinted at about 5% rise or fall relative to the demand before the pandemic within a decade.
- The OPEC’s other concerns are the stabilization of world oil prices without jeopardizing national expenditure programmes,
- The diversification of economies in anticipation of the unfolding global energy transition. Unity would be of the essence amid this uncertainty
PRELIMS PUNCHERS
- Peru
It is officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a mega diverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon Basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon river.
The country has fifty-four hydrographic basins, fifty-two of which are small coastal basins that discharge their waters into the Pacific Ocean. The other two are the Amazon basin, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and the endorheic basin of Lake Titicaca, both delimited by the Andes mountain range. In the second of these basins, the giant Amazon River begins,is the longest river in the world, with 75% of the Peruvian territory.
- Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs)
Tribal communities are often identified by some specific signs such as primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness to contact with the community at large and backwardness. Along with these, some tribal groups have some specific features such as dependency on hunting, gathering for food, having pre-agriculture level of technology, zero or negative growth of population and extremely low level of literacy. These groups are called Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.
PVTGs are more vulnerable among the tribal groups. Due to this factor, more developed and assertive tribal groups take a major chunk of the tribal development funds, because of which PVTGs need more funds directed for their development. In this context, in 1975, the Government of India initiated to identify the most vulnerable tribal groups as a separate category called PVTGs and declared 52 such groups, while in 1993 an additional 23 groups were added to the category, making it a total of 75 PVTGs out of 705 Scheduled Tribes, spread over 17 states and one Union Territory (UT), in the country (2011 census).
- 3. ‘Wadi’ project
Kattunaykka tribal people, a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), are traditionally forest dwellers but, the members of the Kattunayakka settlement at Cheeyambam in Wayanad district in kerala  are settled as skilled farmers now, to the ‘Wadi’, orchard, programme implemented by the MS. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) with the support of the NABARD.
Major crops that are being cultivated include Coffee, Pepper, ginger, and turmeric but, the predicament of the tribal farmers forced them to sell their crops even before harvest to middlemen. They were trained in modern agricultural practices and making value added products from their crops. Linkages established with buyers such as farmer producer organizations within and outside the district made the farmers to sell their products at premium price
PRELIMS QUESTIONS
- Consider the following with regard to Peru
- It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Paraguay
- Endorheic basin of Lake Titicaca, delimited by the Andes mountain range
Select the correct statement using code given below.
(a). 1only      (b) 2 only
(c).Both      (d). None of above
Answer: B
It is officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a mega diverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon Basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon river.
The country has fifty-four hydrographic basins, fifty-two of which are small coastal basins that discharge their waters into the Pacific Ocean. The other two are the Amazon basin, which empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and the endorheic basin of Lake Titicaca, both delimited by the Andes mountain range. In the second of these basins, the giant Amazon River begins,is the longest river in the world, with 75% of the Peruvian territory.
- Kattunaykka tribal people is a PVTG of which of the following state
- Kerala
- Tamil Nadu
- Odisha
- Chhattisgarh
Answer : A
a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG), are traditionally forest dwellers but, the members of the Kattunayakka settlement at Cheeyambam in Wayanad district in kerala  are settled as skilled farmers now, to the ‘Wadi’, orchard, programme implemented by the MS. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) with the support of the NABARD.
Major crops that are being cultivated include Coffee, Pepper, ginger, and turmeric but, the predicament of the tribal farmers forced them to sell their crops even before harvest to middlemen. They were trained in modern agricultural practices and making value added products from their crops. Linkages established with buyers such as farmer producer organizations within and outside the district made the farmers to sell their products at premium price