Saudi Arabia has no permanent rivers or lakes. Rainfall is low and unreliable. Cereals can be cultivated only through expensive projects that deplete underground reservoirs. Dairy cattle must be cooled with fans and machines that spray them with water mists. This is not, in short, a nation that would normally be associated with large-scale agriculture.

Opec pushed its oil production to the highest level in its 48-year history last month, even as demand was slipping in the US and Eur-ope, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday.

The combination of surplus supply and weaker demand has pushed oil prices to $113.50 a barrel, down 24 per cent in the last month and the lowest level since late April.

Oil prices plunged below $130 a barrel yesterday, extending a sharp three-day decline and fuelling a second day of big gains in stocks that lifted Wall Street out of bear market territory.

The continued fall in oil, which last week reached a record high of $147.27, combined with the rally in bank stocks to brighten what a few days ago looked like an increasingly bleak financial and economic outlook.

Madrid: Iran on Wednesday refused to follow Saudi Arabia in raising its crude production to calm volatility in the international oil markets, even as it remained ambivalent on whether Tehran will use oil as a weapon to retaliate if its nuclear installations came under attack from Israel.

Amid demands from oil consumers across the world, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah announced on Sunday that his country had increased its output to 9.7 million barrels a day and could do more if necessary.

Jeddah: Two days after inflation figures threw up a 13-year high of 11.05%, largely attributed to the hike in fuel prices, finance minister P Chidambaram cautioned oil producers that they would also suffer in case the global economy slows down or slips into recession due to high oil prices. India, he said, had passed on barely 9% of the required price increase to customers three weeks ago and the result was that inflation crossed 11%. Even oil producing countries like Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela face double digit inflation up to 29.3%.

Jeddah : The world's energy powers embarked on a new level of dialogue to rein in runaway oil prices at an emergency meeting in this Red Sea city, but were unlikely to come up with a quick fix. While British prime minister Gordon Brown said there was a consensus that oil prices were too high, host Saudi Arabia vowed to pump more oil in response to consumer countries' requests. But, he said that alone would not be enough to calm a market driven by an array of factors.

Why the Saudis are worried about the high price of crude

BY ANDREW HAMMOND AND SIMON WEBB Leading oil exporter Saudi Arabia has summoned consumer nations and fellow producers to an urgently convened meeting to thrash out a solution to oil prices, which it says are unjustifiably high. Producers and consumers have long blamed each other, but the Saudi Cabinet, chaired by King Abdullah, issued instructions to bring them together after oil rose by an unprecedented $16 a barrel over a little more than 24 hours to more than $139.

Abu Dhabi is preparing to launch a large-scale agricultural project in Sudan to develop more than 70,000 acres of land as part of the oil-rich Gulf emirate's efforts to secure food supplies. The project comes amid growing interest from Middle Eastern states to use land overseas to ensure food security. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have also held talks with Sudan and are considering agricultural projects of their own in Africa's largest nation, officials confirmed yesterday.