Expensive tastes

It [OPEC] can set a floor under the price, but it cannot set a ceiling. To do that, it would have to maintain a larger margin of spare capacity, probably about 4m bpd, which could be tapped whenever prices rise too far or too fast. As recently as 2002, the organisation had a cushion of 6m bpd. But now OPEC is operating with precious little to spare: only about 1m bpd in an 83m-bpd market.

Economist