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The OPEC countries do charge realistic prices for their commodities. They already hiked the price when they realised their power - hence the oil shocks of the 1970s. What they charge now is largely a function of what the market will bear. Too high a price and the market will develop alternatives - such as renewables, or such as the horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques that have made shale exploitable. Now OPEC is allowing prices to stay low - rather than rebalancing the market as they have previously done at times of cyclical, rather than structural, oversupply - because they want to kill off a chunk of US shale, which is a threat to their political/economic power. Making renewables that bit harder to do is probably just a bonus.
I say OPEC. This policy is largely the GCC's doing - the more populous OPEC states like Venezuela and Algeria and Iran would much prefer a higher price, because their budgets are stretched. But the GCC, and Saudi in particular, have a point to prove.
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h2o
Ah, I wouldn't say that, but I may not have been clear. Or I may indeed be talking bollocks, in which case tell me if the following is. I said:
By 'region' I mean the whole region, not only Syria and Iraq. By 'stability' (or lack thereof) I mean to refer to the long history of divide-and-rule in the region, typically arming the minority somewhere against the majority in 'post-colonial' (really 'quasi-post-colonial') textbook politics (but also dividing countries and other countries), installing and propping up kleptocracies which kowtow to the West's interest in a lower oil price than they should be charging. This has a long-term effect that offsets the inevitable fluctuations in price based on supply factors.
Were the Near and Middle East able to emancipate themselves and charge realistic prices for their resources, the world's economy would become more balanced pretty damn quickly.