Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al Naimi

Where is Yogi Berra when we need him? There is Iran going back to its old game plan, threatening to ban oil exports.

Your Highness, just in case you have not been doing Your sums consider the following: where natural gas and crude oil were traditionally priced in tandem almost step by step, with the vast new supplies of natural gas here, that relationship has now changed dramatically.

To listen to the Saudis and their friends in the press, they are doing the very best they can about sky-high prices at the pump, and we should all be thankful. The sham is preposterous, and yet they are able to game us again and again.

While the International Energy Agency is warning oil producing countries to increase output to safeguard the fragile global economic recovery, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has just declared himself to be that countries OPEC representative.

Blazoned on the top of the CNBC News page was the headline, "US Futures Turn Higher Following OPEC News." The article goes on to advise that OPEC was considering raising production for the first time in two years.

Saudi Arabia should be complimented for the change in tone that has altered what otherwise has been an on going and grating discourse between oil buyers and sellers.

OPEC announced today an additional production cut of more than 2 million barrels/day. And surprise, surprise: the price of oil fell by some three dollars a barrel. Sic Transit gloria!

The true "nightmare scenario" would be if we let Saudi Arabia and the oil industry flacks sway us one iota from the course our new president has set, to turn us away from fossil fuels for once and forever!

The ever obliging oil industry commentators and talking heads are falling all over themselves complimenting the Saudis for their seriousness in abiding by its OPEC allocation.

With OPEC's volition to keep prices at artificial and egregiously high levels, they have forever lost all semblance as suppliers who can be relied upon in good times and bad.

Given the unwillingness of the Saudis and their assembled OPEC brethren to propose anything meaningful that would alter current price or supply trends, the Jeddah oil "summit" was a dud.

What a gracious gesture from the Saudis to raise production, after having brought the world's economy to the brink of ruin and causing untold damage to the lives of people across the globe.