This could be a difficult moment for Saudi Arabia. After urgent calls for a meeting of the Opec cartel by its more hawkish members, the organisation has agreed to get together next month to consider the precipitious fall in the oil price, now below $80 per barrel.

The world is not looking good for oil exporters. The International Energy Agency yesterday again slashed its estimate of growth in demand for crude. In response to that signal and the general panic in the financial markets, Brent crude fell by $6 to $76 per barrel.

Not all the Opec states are keen on the idea of an output cut to shore up the price. All the cartel members have grown used to lying on a cushion stuffed with cash, but the Saudis, the Kuwaitis and the Emirates are trying to diversify their economies away from oil and into industrial production that adds value and creates employment.

A global recession would derail their plans and wreck their nascent financial markets. It would be a disaster for the boom cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which have expanded not only because of oil wealth but because of trade and general commercial activity. Meanwhile, the sovereign wealth funds of the Gulf have been active, spending heavily in Europe and the United States, investments that are now looking distinctly soggy.

Saudi Arabia needs a $100 per barrel oil price like a hole in the head. It is the weaker economies of Opec, such as Iran and Venezuela, that are demanding action, but the Saudis are even now putting more oil on the market, by widening the discount at which they sell Arab Heavy, their cheapest product.

Saudi Arabia would like to see the price continue its gentle slide, according to the Centre for Global Energy Studies. It estimates that the Kingdom's price floor, the level at which it might suffer distress, is $60 per barrel. The wider question is at what level Western oil companies cease investing. Ten years ago $15 was the average cost per barrel, but the price has since doubled; for oil sands, the threshold has reached $80 per barrel.

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