Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez opened an OPEC summit on Saturday with a chilling warning about 200-dollar oil if the United States attacks Iran in a speech that also urged the cartel to be more political.
But internal divisions about the role of the oil exporters' group were highlighted when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, OPEC kingpin and key US regional ally, sounded a moderate note, saying oil "must not become an instrument for conflict."
Chavez, a fiery leftist and fiercely anti-US leader, warned that crude prices could double from their current already-record level of near 100 dollars a barrel if Washington attacked Iran or aggressed Venezuela.
"If the United States was mad enough to attack Iran or aggress Venezuela again the price of a barrel of oil won't just reach 100 dollars, but even 200 dollars," he said.
He also urged assembled leaders from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, meeting for only the third time in the cartel's 47-year history, to club together for geopolitical reasons.
"Today OPEC stands strong. It is stronger than it has ever been in the past," he said. "OPEC should set itself up as an active geopolitical agent."
King Abdullah defended the aims of the cartel, which controls the output of its 12 members to influence world crude prices, in a speech that was in stark contrast in content and style to the Venezuelan's.
"Those who say that OPEC is a monopolistic organisation are ignoring the fact that OPEC always behaves in a moderate and wise manner," he added.
OPEC's 12-strong membership is dominated by pro-Western Gulf states but includes an anti-US bloc of Iran and Venezuela.
The group has a history of using its oil exports as a political weapon -- members ceased exports in 1973 in protest at Israel's invasion of Syria -- but nowadays Saudi Arabia likes to stress the purely economic and technical agenda of the group.
The summit here is intended to map out the strategic direction of the OPEC, which produces about 40 percent of world oil, but the group is divided on a number of issues.
Chavez -- who opened the summit because he hosted the last OPEC gathering in Caracas in 2000 -- made a series of blistering attacks on the United States and also posited that oil was the source of all conflict.
"The basis of all aggression is oil. It is the underlying reason," Chavez said, pointing to the war in Iraq and US threats against Iran because of the Islamic republic's disputed nuclear programme.
OPEC's 12-strong membership is dominated by pro-Western Gulf states but includes an anti-US bloc of Iran and Venezuela.
The event comes at a time of tension on world oil markets, with the cartel under pressure to increase its output to help calm record crude prices that had threatened to breach 100 dollars a barrel 10 days ago.
"Managing OPEC politics growing forward is going to be increasingly difficult so long as antagonism between Iran and Venezuela and the US continues," said an analyst from US-based oil brokerage SIG, Yasser Elguindi, before Chavez's speech.
"You have the anti-US crowd and the neutral crowd."
Another leftist South American country, Ecuador, is set to seal its return to OPEC at the summit after leaving the cartel in 1992.
King Abdullah also announced that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer, was to invest 300 million dollars (200 million euros) to develop technology to tackle climate change.
In a gaffe late on Friday, a private meeting of OPEC oil, foreign and finance ministers was mistakenly broadcast to journalists, which revealed other differences at the heart of the organisation.
The footage showed Iran pushing for a reference to the falling dollar in a final communique to be issued by leaders at the end of the summit, providing a rare glimpse of the inner workings of the organisation.
Journalists witnessed Saudi Arabia reject the idea courtesy of a television in the media room that mistakenly had a live feed of the meeting.
The eavesdropping ended when a furious official emerged to switch off the broadcast.
The fall of the dollar, which has declined by about 15 percent in 12 months, has affected the revenues of OPEC members because most of them price and sell their oil exports in the US currency.
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