A new secretary general should be elected at an Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) ministerial meeting in Vienna on Thursday but otherwise it is expected to be business – or rather little business – as usual.
Related: World’s biggest oil producers meet to discuss possible freeze on production
Mohammed Barkindo, a former boss of Nigeria’s national oil company, is in pole position to be installed as front man for the oil cartel, whose lack of internal unity leaves it unable to take decisive action.
Among those eligible to vote for him will be another new face at Opec top table, the newly appointed Saudi energy minister Khalid al-Falih, who showed his intent to take the summit seriously by arriving at the start of the week.
But determination to break the sense of drift inside Opec is being undermined by the fact that market forces have driven up the value of benchmark Brent blend to about $50 per barrel.
That is still down massively from the $115 seen this time two years ago but more than 80% up on the level seen mid-February, and enough to take some pain away from those Opec countries most exposed to low prices.
Some countries whose economies are in crisis due to the prolonged slump in the cost of oil, such as Venezuela, hope a production freeze can be agreed by Opec in an effort to bolster prices.
But the laissez-faire consensus more likely to prevail was outlined by Suhail bin Mohammed al-Mazrouei, the energy minister for the United Arab Emirates, who said: “Supply and demand are working and this is the element of this (Opec) policy. From the beginning of the year until now, the market has been correcting itself upward. This is the year of correction.”
There has been renewed talk among some Opec members about holding output with Saudi Arabia said to be among those in favour. But a previous attempt to do this at a meeting in April came to nothing because the Saudis refused to support the plan because Iran refused to cooperate. Saudi Arabia and Iran are locked in a regional political rivalry that has spilled out into Opec.
And Tehran said its position remained unchanged. “Iran supports Opec’s efforts to bring stability to the market with fair and logical prices, but it will not commit to any output freeze,” Mehdi Asali , the country’s Opec representative said in an interview with the Iranian oil ministry news agency, Shana.
There is increasing hopes in some quarters that the price of oil has bottomed out and should be well on its way to $60 in the second half of the year. The normally bearish analysts at Goldman Sachs have recently been much more upbeat about prospects for the costs of crude to increase.
But others warn that the spike since February has largely been driven by supply outages due to renewed militant action against pipelines in Nigeria and bushfires in Canada.
As output gradually returns to normal there and production growth occurs in places such as Iran and Iraq, the price of oil will again begin to ratchet downwards given the sluggish state of demand due to a stagnant world economy, say the pessimists.
Low oil prices are bad for producing countries but good for major importers such as China. Britain loses North Sea activity but gains from lower petrol and other fuel costs.
Bjarne Schieldrop, the chief commodities analyst at the Nordic bank SEB, warned that the violent crude oil price moves experienced since mid-2014 could become the rule rather than the exception, not just down, but also up.
“The Opec meeting tomorrow is not attracting much attention as no cuts or freezes are anticipated and we don’t expect any agreements on production limiting measures,” he said.
“Increasingly however, we think that the market must also start to realise that Opec will no longer hold much reserve capacity in order to increase production during periods of deficit. We may have disliked Opec’s action and managed interference in the oil market, however, we might end up missing it next time it goes wrong, possibly then to the upside.”
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