The European Union and the Opec oil cartel spent yesterday in an entirely vacuous summit. Everything ministers said when it was over was wrong or unwise. Of the two organisations, the EU has more reason to be defensive, but the past three days have also shown how much Opec has to rely on wishful thinking in place of policy.

The dance began at the weekend, at the Opec summit in Jedda called by Saudi Arabia. It was a Saudi show, to deliver a Saudi message. Before Sunday’s meeting, King Abdullah bin Abdelaziz al-Saud said that the kingdom was resolved to prevent oil prices from rising “in an unjustified and abnormal manner”, while announcing an increase in production too small to have any such impact. In any case, other members promptly said that they disagreed with the need to raise production at all.

Yesterday, after the Opec-EU meeting in Brussels, Andris Piebalgs, the EU Energy Commissioner, said: “Both sides support more supervision in the markets.” Chakib Khelil, the Opec president, added that it was very important that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the UK’s Financial Service Authority stiffen up oversight of the markets. This is meaningless. It spuriously attributes the volatility of crude oil prices to “speculation”, and implies that regulators could readily distinguish between types of trader and purpose of trading, and could attempt to curb who could do what. It would be better to acknowledge that the sudden price lurches have been an entirely reasonable trading response to investors’ search for a hedge against inflation, and to a deluge of economic reports whose impact is very hard to calculate, on either side of the Atlantic. There has also been no lack of dramatic garnishes, such as militant attacks on a Nigerian field and Israel practising long-range flights, of a span that could reach Iran.

The second part of the EU-Opec statement “recognised the importance of secure future demand for crude and products in spurring timely investment both upstream and downstream, thus contributing to greater security of supply”. The EU, which imports 80 per cent of its oil, offered an assurance that it would not cut imports over the next couple of decades. This is probably a fair bet, even if growth stalls, and even if the EU makes progress on its climate change targets, but why offer it?

It was a summit with the sole purpose of being seen (on the European side) to be doing something about the pain of high oil prices, without either side being able to do much about it at all. The slowdown in US and European growth may take the price down from its heights, but the still fast-growing demand from China and India may stop it falling much. In the battle to avoid blame, it is no surprise that ministers claim more influence than they have, and accuse the phantom villains of the world markets. But that won’t make the price fall.

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