James Van Blaricum

Jim Van Blaricum Signal Oil Gas was also showing disappointment over Saudi Arabia's modest production increase announced Sunday at a meeting of oil producing and consuming nations. The kingdom said it would pump more crude oil this year if the market needs it, but its pledge fell far short of U.S. hopes for a larger increase.

"The Saudi hike in output that they announced on Sunday is not enough to cause prices to come down," said James Van Blaricum.

The oil market has been in a holding pattern to see whether Saudi Arabia would take more aggressive steps toward boosting output, said Stephen Schork, an oil market analyst and trader in Villanova, Pa. The market's likely to view the announcement as a sign Saudi Arabia will not, he said.

"We don't know anything more today" than what was known Friday, said Schork, who predicted "$150 [a barrel], here we come."

In attending the Saudi King's energy summit at the weekend, the Prime Minister colluded in a publicity stunt of the first order. Not very long ago, he was so worried about appearing to jeopardise our national sovereignty that he signed the Lisbon Treaty by himself, as far from the glare of television cameras as he could.

And the administration has spent the last eight years trying to convince Congress that the key to America’s energy security is opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling — even though estimates from the Energy Information Administration suggest that drilling in the refuge would make very little difference to the energy outlook, and the oil companies themselves aren’t especially interested in punching holes in the tundra.