But they don’t want to send the wrong signal to the market. They want to continue a loose supply policy, meaning that if there’s a crude problem, which there isn’t now, they can supply it.

OPEC wants to be perceived as part of the solution, not part of the problem,

If you’re an international oil company and see this trend, it must be worrying.

If you gave oil companies a choice between the tar sands in Canada or oil in Saudi Arabia, which do you think they’d choose?

If demand continues to be strong we are going to be struggling.

They’ve been wrong the last two years about what the second quarter fundamentals are going to look like. Fundamentally speaking, it’s probably not a good ideal to pre-empt the market.

OPEC wants the maximum price they can sustain to meet their budgetary needs and investment plans, and keep their economies growing, while making sure that demand in the rest of the world keeps growing. The...

High prices have given all producing countries a lot more leverage.