When the new Kuwaiti minister arrived in Vienna to take part in his first ever OPEC meeting late last week, some of the assembled journalists followed him into the hotel's revolving door. It was a bit cartoonish as the ladies and
gentlemen of the press jammed themselves into the tiny space with Sheikh Ahmed al-Sabah and got stuck there for a few minutes.
It may not have taken the minister long to figure out that he was in fact stuck between two hard places, a situation similar to the one the cartel itself found itself as it prepared to meet in the Austrian capital.
Balancing their own budgetary needs with those of an ailing global economy was the issue at hand for the 12 men who gathered in Vienna to decide whether to go for the quick fix and cut their oil production further or stick with their existing quotas, improve compliance with existing targets and hope the revolving door would lead them to a slightly rosier future.
In the end, after one Kuwaiti delegate said was a "relatively easy meeting" the ministers of countries that supply some 35% of global crude oil demand opted to err on the side of caution. They agreed to leave their production targets unchanged until their next meeting at the end of May and wait to see whether consumers would draw down
their stocks and start buying oil again in the second half of the year.
No doubt the ministers were also mindful of the forthcoming G20 meeting in London, to be attended by new US president Barak Obama and the king of OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia, where the world's economic powers will try to tackle the current financial crisis.
The Kuwaiti minister had said before leaving for Vienna at the weekend that the producers' club faced a very difficult balancing act in its quest for the proper response to low energy demand, high stocks and prices far lower than the summer of 2008.
Little did he know that he would literally find himself in a tight jam on arrival in Vienna.
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