Can OPEC Keep Them That Way?
It’s become a predictable September ritual: officials from the world’s oil-rich nations fly into Vienna for their annual OPEC meeting, huddle around a gleaming conference table and decide how to push oil prices up or down by closing or opening the spigots on their vast resources — about two-thirds of the world’s total reserves. At this week’s meeting, however, OPEC’s oil ministers attempted an even trickier acrobatic act: staying in place. During the oil markets’ wild ride last year, prices hit an all-time high of $147 a barrel in July before crashing to slightly more than $30 a barrel in December. Now oil futures hover around $70 a barrel — a price that is, finally, just right, according to Ali Al-Naimi, oil minister from Saudi Arabia, which produces about one-third of all OPEC oil. “The market is in very good shape,” he told Reuters when he arrived in Vienna on Wednesday, Sept. 9. But holding prices steady might be OPEC’s toughest act yet. Oil analysts list a few key factors that OPE
