Hangover awaits as Opec celebrates

London

LET Opec celebrate. For now.

The oil club is dizzy with its own success after a harmonious meeting in Vienna, where it surprised the world by agreeing to its first production cut in eight years. Oil prices up 10 per cent? Check. Saudi Arabia and Iran in agreement? Check. Opec and Russia working together? Check. After being left for dead, Opec pulled it off once again.

In hurried notes just hours after the end of the meetings, analysts joined the party. "Opec resurrection", Neil Beveridge at Sanford C Bernstein & Co called it. "Opec is back", opined Martijn Rats of Morgan Stanley. "Opec in the driver's seat", trumpeted Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.

Leave it to Abhishek Deshpande of Natixis in London to take away the punch bowl. "Opec returns", he said, "but be wary". Mr Deshpande, though a party-pooper, is correct that there are many reasons not to get too delirious about the agreement to curtail output by 1.2 million barrels a day, the most prominent…