OPEC doesn’t have a leader. It’s an organization of 12 independent states connected neither by geography nor culture. Just oil. But in effect, Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil producer, is their leader. Generally, what Saudis want, Saudis get. They got what they wanted at the latest OPEC summit in Vienna. The United States got what it wanted too, incidentally -- without being there (President Bush's gaffe-ridden salutes notwithstanding). It pays to have Saudi Arabia on your side.

The Saudis like oil at $70 a barrel. They don’t mind oil at $80 a barrel, the record level it reached briefly today. But they fear that if prices rise too much, too fast, at a time when recession is eyeballing the American economy and a slowdown may infect the rest of the world, oil prices could collapse. The Saudis don’t want a repeat of the 1998 Asian economic crisis, which crashed oil demand and prices to historic lows.

That’s how it goes in the oil world: What’s great news for consumers (gas at $1 a gallon instead of $3) is misery for oil-producing governments. So the Saudis went into the latest OPEC summit looking to increase oil production OPEC-wide by 500,000 barrels a day, just enough, in their calculation, to edge down prices a bit and relieve pressure on strained economies. Iran and Venezuela, OPEC’s current axis of ax-grinders, didn’t want quota increases. They’re both desperate for hard cash and they paradoxically don’t mind making life tough on the United States: It’s in their job description.

Somehow the Saudis convinced them, after seven hours of negotiations on Wednesday, to go along with the quota increase. Despite that, oil prices hit their record. Keep in mind that OPEC quotas or no, the organization isn’t nearly as commanding as it once was, and not just because of its internal rifts. Six of the top ten oil producers in the world -- Canada, China, Mexico, Russia, Norway and the United States -- are not OPEC members, and Iraq, which is a member, doesn’t have a quota.

One more note. That 500,000 increase may not be an increase at all but a replacement: Crude oil production in Iraq, according to the Brookings Institution’s latest Iraq Security Index (see p. 38), was down to 1.71 million barrels per day, from 2.24 million barrels a year ago. There’s your 500,000 barrels.

As for American dependence on foreign oil, the list of supplier countries will surprise you.