The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) may no longer be the beast that shook the West in the 1970s by quadrupling the price of oil. But behaving again like a real cartel, oil exporters who meet this week will receive an attentive audience in finance ministries across the industrialised world.
OPEC will waste little time endorsing the policy of supply cuts which has sent oil prices rocketing this year.
OPEC intends keeping a strange-hold on production for another six months until April to completely drain the excess stockpiles which caused last year's price slump.
But by baring its teeth again, is OPEC threatening to bite the hand that feeds it? Fears in the West are that sustained price rises could inflame inflationary pressures. Oil market analysts say that if economic growth slows and Asia's recovery is put at risk from rising import bills then demand for OPEC oil will slow.
"Already oil prices are beginning to raise concern about the dangers of inflation and the consequent risk to (economic) growth projections," warned Mehdi Varzi of Dresdner Kleinwort Benson.
"Any attempt by OPEC to increase oil prices in real terms is ultimately self-defeating," said Leo Drollas of London's Centre for Global Energy Studies. "This lesson appears to have been forgotten in OPEC's rush to boost short-term revenues."
