Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries officials, have been, as in past months, unflappable in the face of oil's meteoric rise Friday to a new peak of more than $139 a barrel, which came on renewed geopolitical tensions and U.S. dollar weakness.
Instead, OPEC officials latched onto recent reports that point to further drops in crude demand as sharply higher energy and commodity prices and cooling housing markets take their toll on consumers globally.
U.S. Labor Department data Friday showed America's unemployment rate logged the highest one-month rise in 22 years in May when the number of jobless jumped to 5.5% from 5.0% in April. The data set off fresh fears about recession in the world's biggest economy and oil consumer and undercut previously building market hopes that U.S. fiscal and monetary stimulus policies the past year would help America avert deeper economic troubles.
Earlier in the week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lowered its economic growth forecast for most of its 30 members, including the United States, Japan and several European countries.
The Paris-based OECD said economic growth in its member nations, which account for the bulk of the world's economic activity, will slow to 1.8% this year and 1.7% in 2009 versus earlier forecasts of 2.3% and 2.4%.
For the oil world, those revisions are significant because economic activity, now worse than previously believed, is the main driver of oil consumption.
The revisions will likely force the International Energy Agency to make more cuts to its global crude demand forecast when its June oil market report is released Tuesday. The IEA, which acts as an energy advisor for developed nations, bases its forecasts on data from the OECD and the International Monetary Fund.
"Where is the demand going? It keeps going down. People need to look at that. Why would we produce more?" Shokri Ghanem, Libya's top oil official, told Dow Jones Newswires, adding he believed the world market had enough oil supply.
A Gulf OPEC official echoed that, saying the 13-nation group "will provide what the market wants. If customers aren't asking for it, we're not going to supply it. We don't think more oil will lower prices anyway." OPEC produces around 40% of the roughly 87 million barrels consumed every day globally.
The IEA, whose reports are seen as the main authority on energy market conditions, has chopped its 2008 world oil demand growth forecast by 54% to 1 million barrels a day since its first 2008 outlook issued last summer, when the world economy was far healthier.
Current projections represent growth of 1.2% from last year, but analysts say consumption is headed even lower.
Analysts at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd., a New York-based investment research firm, believe oil demand growth globally will be lucky to hit 0.5% this year. That level would be just half the rate of growth seen in 2005-2007 and significantly lower than the longer term average of 1.8%.
Bernstein's outlook is based on a range of measures that indicate weaker oil consumption, such as a big rise in public transport use in Japan, the world's third-biggest crude consumer after the U.S. and China.
Even traffic on normally clogged highways in California, America's biggest economy and state by population, is easing as high oil costs take their toll, according to Bernstein calculations.
Oil demand prospects have also weakened in recent days after several developing Asian nations, like India, raised fuel prices to ease the growing strain that billions of dollars worth of fuel subsidies are having on state budgets.
The price increases will pinch oil demand as consumers feel the fuller affect of higher prices and are likely to exacerbate inflationary pressures that could force regional central banks to raise interest rates - posing yet another threat to the region's growth.
But the weakening oil demand outlook is, so far, not having much of a pressuring affect on oil prices.
That's because, for the time being, rapid Chinese oil demand, the most important component to global oil demand growth, is likely to offset any demand softening in other Asian nations and elsewhere.
And after years of underinvestment, OPEC's oil pumping capacity is too limited to have a big downward impact on prices, with the group's effective spare production capacity at a historically low level of just over 2 million barrels a day.
Most of that capacity is held by Saudi Arabia. The kingdom rejected requests by U.S. President George W. Bush in May for more oil, though Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi acknowledged the country would sell 300,000 barrels a day more in June to a total of 9.45 million barrels a day because of added customer demand.
OPEC critics say the group has abetted increased oil prices by keeping its official production target unchanged the past nine months even as struggling non-OPEC supply from nations like Mexico and Russia helped propel crude prices higher.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Sunday added to the chorus of jawboning from oil consuming nations calling on OPEC for more supply, telling an Australian television news program that the world's biggest economies needed to apply a "blowtorch" of pressure on OPEC to raise output.
Critics say OPEC should put its own hypothesis to the test: "Perhaps the time has come for OPEC to put its assertion that more crude oil will not help ring down prices to the test," the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies said recently. OPEC's next scheduled meeting is in September.