The oil is market priced. The OPEC cartel can do nothing, they have competition from the inside and the outside. Every member (and outsider) always wants the others to reduce production. "They sell less, we sell more to higher prices". Who wouldn't want that? Their significance for pricing is exaggerated. Typical main stream media journalist nonsense.
The reason for the oil price turbulence is over-investment due to artificial low interest rate. Oil is special because it is both a raw material with a production process that runs over decennia until the finished product reaches the consumer, and in addition it is capital intensive. The interest rate means a lot for oil. It would be easy to get it wrong also under sound money and free market interest rate, under current conditions there just have to be over-investment.
Oil producing governments around the world will probably counter that with even lower interest rate and intensified investment (to keep the serfs happy with jobs and trickle down effects on the rest of the folks in the land). Additionally, they are slow to change course. Governments own the oil fields and the largest oil companies nowadays. Therefore, over investment will continue for some time, and we will see even lower oil prices.
The OPEC cartel was the reason for the oil shock which hit the world economy in 1973 (and later in 1979). Crude oil was trading at less than $3 prior to this and nobody could believe that prices could increase so rapidly in such a short time period.
