BEE Partner, South Africa Economy Watch

The whole week hiking price of oil, nobody can stand still. We need to find out who is indeed stimulate it.

A week after failing to deflate record oil prices at a summit in Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude producers and consumers will get another chance to tackle the problem at a new meeting this week.

More than 3 000 delegates, including leading corporate and political figures, are to meet at the 19th World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in Madrid, which runs from tomorrow to Thursday after an official opening reception yesterday.

“It’s the Olympics of the oil and gas industry,” said Pierce Riemer, the director of the WPC.

The gathering follows a surge in oil prices on Friday that took both New York light sweet crude and Brent North Sea crude to record levels beyond $142 (R1 124) a barrel.

The president of Opec, the oil producers‘ cartel; the head of the International Energy Agency; and ministers from Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, India, France and the Netherlands are expected to be present.

They will be joined by the bosses of major international oil groups ExxonMobil of the US, Cnooc, Britain’s BP and Shell, Rosneft of Russia and Total of France.

Saudi Arabia convened a hastily arranged meeting of consumers and producers in Jeddah last week to tackle the problem of record oil prices, which are set to touch $150 and $170 in the coming months, according to Opec’s forecast.

Most experts agreed afterwards that the only concrete result was Saudi Arabia’s announcement that it would increase daily production by more than 200 000 barrels to 9.7 million – and that it could significantly step this up if necessary.

The gathering pitted consumer nations against producers.

Most Opec members remain firmly against any increase in production. They blame speculators and the fall in the dollar for the remarkable run-up in prices.

Jorge Segrelles, the head of the organising committee of the WPC, said the meeting was intended to be “a forum for actively finding solutions“.

However, given the differences in the assessment of the situation between consumer and producer countries, Colette Lewiner, the head of energy at consultancy Capgemini, saw little chance of an agreement.

“There might be declarations of intent, but there will not be a consensus in the short term,” she said.

The main event, which will take place in Madrid’s Ifema conference centre, faces competition from a rival meeting of environmentalists called to promote alternatives to crude oil as an energy source.

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