A March 18 report on al-Jazeera noted a cruel irony to OPEC’s just-ended conference in Isfahan, where the oil ministers of the 11 member nations agreed to boost production in a bid to bring down global prices. No sooner did the conference close before prices surged to an all-time record high of $57 a barrel. And this despite the fact that OPEC is already at the collective 27.5 million barrels per day agreed upon at Isfahan, making the accord a mere formality. OPEC president and Kuwaiti Oil Minister Shaikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah said: "I think that now everybody is overproducing. Current prices make it lucrative for everybody to hike production without the need for a decision."
Other oil ministers agreed. "Member countries are already producing over their quotas," said the Algerian delegate Chakib Khalil.
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"We are raising the ceiling of production because we are already producing that amount," said
The al-Jazeera account did mention (albeit rather dismissively) the "peak oil" hypothesis as a factor driving the high prices. It failed to note the far more obvious reality of ongoing chaos in Iraq and war fears in Iran as fueling the spike.
