With Rare Unity, OPEC Ministers Gather in Iran

Jad Mouawad, The New York Times:

Trading its usual meeting place, along the blue waters of the Danube in Vienna, for the muddy waters of the Zayandeh River here, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is meeting in Iran for the first time since the Islamic revolution toppled the monarchy in 1979 and brought in the rule of the clerics. READ MORE

The gathering in this ancient capital, which dominated Persia for 200 years until the 18th century, is testimony to an uncommon consensus that has taken hold in the oil cartel over the last five years and has shaped the group's most successful period since its creation in 1960.

Oil prices are high, there is little infighting, and a comfortable premium is likely to fill OPEC coffers for a while. Perhaps the producing nations can afford to be a bit generous to the world's consumers.

Indeed, these high prices have opened OPEC members to criticism lately, and whether they bow to foreign pressure or to their own financial needs is an increasingly important question for the global economy. As oil ministers from Persian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait gather for the meeting - in a grand room with walls inlaid in 17-carat gold - some have suggested a conciliatory path.

The official Saudi Press Agency said Monday that OPEC should increase its quota by 500,000 barrels a day above the current ceiling of 27 million barrels to help ease prices. Some members have already been producing at levels above their national ceilings to help bring prices down, with OPEC seemingly turning a blind eye to the breach of quotas.

Last week, the Kuwaiti oil minister, Sheik Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah, said the producers' group was "concerned" about the recent price rises, "despite the fact that the market is well supplied and global crude oil stocks have continued to build."

But OPEC's intentions and its signals have been mixed, and in the past, it has sometimes raised hopes before a meeting, only to change very little.

Iran's oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, suggested that more supply was not needed. He told reporters here that although OPEC felt some pressure to bring prices down, "everything is not in our hands."...