— This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on November 27, Thursday.
Welcome to the CNBC Business Daily.
Oil prices are holding near 4 year lows ahead of today's OPEC meeting in Vienna.
We still don't know what the producer bloc is going to do, but we know that they are united in their decision.
Saudia Arabia's oil minister Ali Al Naimi being very vague last night, telling us Gulf States have reached a consensus, but not what it was.
His Iranian countepart was equally coy, but did tell us that OPEC has the street smarts to extricate themselves from the prolonged slump in prices.
[SOT/Bijan Namdar Zangeneh /Oil Minister of Iran]
We are gathering here in OPEC to exchange views and reach agreement. And as I said, OPEC has long term experience to face these kind of difficulties and I'm sure that OPEC can go out of this situation very well.
[WALL]
OPEC is no stranger to controversy and crisis.
Arab Oil Embargo, 1973-74
Responding to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, OPEC's Arab members imposed an embargo against the U.S., extending the ban to countries that supported Israel. The Arab petro-states used oil as a weapon, and quadrupled the price of oil to $12 a barrel by the end of the crisis in March 1974.
OPEC Siege, 1975
December 1975, OPEC's summit becomes quite literally a matter of life and death when pro-Palestinian militants led by Ilich Ramírez Sánchez , AKA Carlos the Jackal, storm the meeting in Vienna, killing three and taking more than 60 hostages including then Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani.
Netback Pricing, 1986
1986, Saudi implements the 'netback' pricing system to regain lost market share, in effect guaranteeing refiners a set margin in exchange for buying Saudi oil. That precipitated a price collapse so deep that it took oil prices 18 years to reach $30 a barrel again.
Ghost of Jakarta, 1997
OPEC miscalculated big time in 1997 when it increased production by 10 percent when the group met in the Indonesian capital. New demand from China would absorb the extra volume, so the Saudis and many within OPEC thought. They didn't bank on the severity of the Asian financial crisis, and by early 1999, oil prices plunged as low as $8 a barrel.
I'm Chen Qian, reporting from CNBC's Asian headquarters.
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