ASSIGNMENT 

You must read all of this page!

Your team should meet face-to-face twice between November 16 and December 7.  Please have someone in the group post your meeting dates, times and locations so all group members can access the information.

The United States is the world's largest consumer of oil; we obtain our oil from many countries, but rely heavily on a few.  What should our petroleum policy be?

The goal is to present a ten to fifteen-minute synopsis of your team's answers to the above question in class on December 7.  After each team presents, the whole class will discuss the issue.  Your team is your WebBoard discussion group.  DISCUSSION GROUP LIST

To be successful, your team should discuss the following questions and come to consensus on what you would like to present to the class.

• What portion of U.S. petroleum imports are derived from the country?
• Is the country a member of OPEC?
• Who runs the country?  Is this a "good" government?  Why or why not?
• Is this country politically stable?  Why or why not?
• What is our current policy toward this country?  Why?
• What is the impact of oil production on this country? (environmental, economic, political)
• Should we buy oil from this country?  If so, how much? (percentage)

Your team should meet face-to-face twice between November 16 and December 7.  You should use the WebBoard to discuss your topic, this will allow you to participate throughout the two weeks of the assignment. Your team will be asked to grade your performance, so you need to show up and participate!  WEBBOARD

The best way to start is to use the resource page I have created.  RESOURCES

For additional resources, go to a search engine such as Yahoo! or Google and type in key words such as your countries name and "petroleum" or "oil" or "environment".  This will give you a lot of information and topics to discuss, so at that point you can read a few articles and decide on a focus or how to present an overview.  Each person in the group should take on a task and bring their results to the group for discussion.