SHOCK: Can OPEC Breakup Collapse Petro Dollar?

http://youtu.be/QL46ricEInY

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Is The Sun Setting on Opec's Reign?

Oil group faces biggest meeting in 20 years as in-fighting and a US resurgence curb its ability to hold prices.

It wouldn't be the first time the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has met in an atmosphere of deep division, bordering on outright hatred.

In 1976, Saudi Arabia's former Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani stormed out of the Opec gathering early when other members of the cartel wouldn't agree to the wishes of his new master, King Khaled.

Opec's 166th meeting in Vienna this week looks as if it could end in a similarly acrimonious fashion with Saudi Arabia and several other members at loggerheads over what to do about falling oil prices.

Whatever action Opec agrees to take to halt the sharp decline in the value of crude, experts agree that one thing is clear: the world is entering an era of lower oil prices that the group is almost powerless to change.

This new energy paradigm may result in oil trading at much lower levels than the US$100 ($126.79) a barrel consumers have grown used to paying over the past decade and reshape the entire global economy.

It could also trigger the eventual break-up of Opec, the group of mainly Middle East producers, which due to its control of 60 per cent of the world's petroleum reserves has often been accused of acting like a cartel.