Future shock

摘要

When the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meets, much of the world's population, from central bankers to lorry drivers, has a stake in how much oil the cartel will decide to pump. That was certainly so on October 19th, as OPEC's oil ministers gathered in Qatar to discuss possible output cuts. Before entering the conclave, the delegates had suggested that they might trim their collective production by 1m barrels a day (b/d)—just over 1% of global supply-but exactly how this cut would be shared and measured was still unclear as The Economist went to press.