The prices of petroleum are higher than ever. All the developing countries are worried about the adverse effects of this price rise on the economies. Leaders and economists all over the world are holding various conferences to tackle this situation. As oil set a new record, top industry executives and a senior European government official urged the world to pull together in the face of skyrocketing energy prices, while acknowledging that costly crude is here to stay for years.

P Chidambaram suggested last fortnight, at a hurriedly-called meeting of OPEC ministers and top policymakers of key consuming countries at Jeddah, that OPEC should restore the price band mechanism to control runaway crude. But even this suggestion was discarded by the cartel of oil exporting countries, which fuels four out of every 10 consumer. He blamed speculators for the price rise.

Heads of western oil companies; however, do not share Chidambaram's view or theory. "I don't think you can blame speculators for the high oil price," Jeroen Van der Veer, CEO of Europe's biggest oil producer Royal Dutch Shell, said. "There is expected tension between supply and demand, which you get in the psychology of the price today. The financial markets make this trend more feasible. They are not independent of it, but to blame them for being the primary movers of the price is hard to prove."

"Well, producing and consuming nations never agree on any price. You remember we talked about $15, they (consuming nations) were saying $13. Then we put a price band of $22-30 and they never agreed with the price band. Then we did away with the price band. Now they say we need to come back to price band. We let the oil market decide. We are never going to agree," OPEC president Chakib Khelil said on the sidelines of the 19th World Petroleum Congress here.

The cartel had put in place a price band mechanism between 2000 and 2005 and global production generally was decided in tune with the band and the demand-supply situation. It was abandoned once prices started climbing, indicating that the market did not agree with the arrangement. But after feeling the heat from the continuous rally in prices, which breached the $142/barrel mark during intra-day trading on Friday, consuming countries have once again started to focus on ways to douse the fire that threatens to destroy many development stories.