2 possibilities: (1) They can’t pump any more; Or, strange as it seems, (2) pumping more oil won’t relieve demand.

A lot of people insist the first explanation is the right one because if they could pump and sell more oil they would - because they like to make money.

OPEC says it’s the second explanation. HE Abdalla Salem El-Badri, Secretary General, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): “Crude oil prices have become detached from the dynamics of supply and demand…”

Oil prices are so out of line they’ve become a problem even for oil producers. Nobuo Tanaka, Executive Director, International Energy Agency (IEA): “[Prices are] too high for everybody, especially for developing countries who face other significant cost increases.”

There is a curious and potentially tragic pattern developing. Rising populations in developing countries are consuming larger gross quantities of oil but it is drastically smaller per capita consumption. Badri: “…energy poverty will remain an important challenge. By 2030, developing countries will consume, on average, about five times less oil per person than OECD countries…”

Meanwhile, oil traders are hustling oil, driving prices up, and neither OPEC nor the IEA can get a bead on the arcana of commodity transactions and individual company supplies that might bring more rationality to the marketplace. Tanaka: “[The] major problem…[is the] lack of stock data…Individually countries may feel their data is sensitive…but globally a lack of transparency aggravates [market] volatility.”

With peaking supplies, OPEC could put itself in such a powerful position. Instead, as its member states pull against one another, prices drive the market toward New Energy development.

OPEC has always been its own worst enemy. It’s the only comfort for the equally impotent leaders of the developed economies.

And it’s great news for New Energy.

Tanaka: “In the short-to-medium term, there is an urgent need for investment to restore an adequate cushion between oil supply and demand…But for the longer-term, to meet environmental concerns, we will require a new global energy revolution to transform the way we produce and use energy.”