The Saudis may exceed quotas to pay barter bills.

Barter trade commitments will force Saudi Arabia to exceed its OPEC production quotas by at least a million barrels of crude oil per day, the influential Economist Intelligence Unit predicted. The Saudis, OPEC’s biggest oil producer, have already swapped oil directly for goods--last year, for aircraft--in barter trade. Though the immediate result of OPEC’s recent agreement to trim production and fix prices has been a 20% rise in crude prices, the Economist’s Middle East Quarterly Energy Review said the Saudis’ barter commitments “will make it impossible for the country’s oil production to remain within OPEC guidelines. . . . Saudi Arabia’s need to step up production will have a powerfully depressing impact on crude prices.”