Oil prices

International oil firms and Opec producers have learned from the 1980s price crash and those harsh lessons are helping them to plan for an orderly retreat from today’s record prices.

The history of oil is punctuated by price collapses but the sharp falls of the mid-1980s were different from most in that they were partly triggered by the industry, which flooded the market with oil and ultimately lost money on uneconomic fields.

“The chief executives of Exxon Mobil, BP and the rest remember those days. No one wants to make the same mistake twice in their career,” recalled an industry insider who worked for a major oil company at the time.

A Reuters poll of analysts sees oil easing from this year’s $78 a barrel peak to $64 in 2007 and $56 in 2008.

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