Absent collusion, of course.

The whole system is predicated on an arm's length relationship between buyers and sellers. Let's say the Arabs who sell oil get together with a group intent on no-good, let's call them, say, the Dirty Left, and actually front the money for the Dirty Left to buy ever-increasing-price oil contracts. Note that the OPEC official marker price still remains where we last left it in 2003, around $24/bbl. The biggest safeguard of the whole system is that these are actual full-price contracts. It was assumed that no one could ever come up with enough money to actually have much influence or distort the market.. But if the people benefiting from the higher prices are supplying the upfront money? And if the declining US Dollar actually subsidizes the purchases of the rest of the world?

The US Dollar has served as the defacto Gold Standard for the rest of the world(they voluntarily hold a percentage of their money supply in US Dollars). Now they should have to buy more Dollars to cover that same percent on the rise in their currency. That demand for the Dollar should have caused the Dollar to increase. Instead the market was flooded with US Dollars, causing the price to fall. I guess I did say voluntary.

Look at actual demand in India and China. See anything like the predictions from 5 years ago? No. More like 1-3% growth, coupled with a DECLINE (to 2002 levels) in the King Kong of consumption--the US. Makes sense since real consumption needs the real petroleum consuming infrastructure which takes time to put in place. And if consumption is dropping in the US, what do you think it is doing in the rest of the world?Notice that the $20-$40 bump for Hurricane Katrina never came down? Same with all the other manufactured crises since.

Start looking over the futures market transactions since 2003 and we'll soon see $24/bbl oil again. After the arrests and the prosecution. Then let OPEC do the raising like they have since the Shah of Iran invented them. Then we will know who's to blame.