What control does Opec have now?

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) declared last month it had lost control of the world market, but energy experts say the group has wrested much of the control back since.

“Opec now has more control than it had a month ago. But it’s not quite there yet,” Ann-Louise Hittle, a Boston-based oil analyst with global consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie, told Gulf News.
Oil sector analysts say Opec doesn’t want to succumb to pressures to raise supply, since market oversupply was the cause of sharp falls in the price of oil as recently as in the late ’90s. In 1998, for example, oil prices on the world market were down to as low as $9 per barrel.

With the benefit of hindsight, Opec is watchful not to let inventories slip out of hand, at a time when the chances of a global economic downturn look real on the back of the severely weakened dollar and the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States, the world’s largest oil importer.

Gulfnews