A private meeting of Opec leaders, gathered this weekend in Riyadh for the cartel's third meeting in its 47-year history, had just been broadcast to the world's media for more than half an hour after a technician had mistakenly plugged the TV feed into the wrong socket.

Oil hit a record high of nearly $79 a barrel on Wednesday, after a modest increase in oil supply announced by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to allay concerns about oil stocks for winter.

Due to increasing oil prices, OPEC has increased its oil output quota. However, Iran does not believe that the price increase is due to the quota, but rather to high summer demand, so it has refused to follow suit.

This is OPEC's official statistical bulletin. Table 9 is the most interesting, in that during the mid 1980s all the OPEC countries reserves suddenly shot up. Table 7 is also interesting, because it bellies the common conception that OPEC countries are getting absurdly wealthy on oil profits.

As oil prices remain volatile the markets do their best to forecast future prices. Unfortunately this is not an easy task. While it may appear extraordinary to outsiders one of the main problems in the oil market is the reliability of basic statistics.