The OPEC summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia this weekend comes as oil trades at above $90 a barrel, which is filling the coffers of OPEC members to the tune of $2 billion a day, over $700 billion a year. But the OPEC summit does not intend to discuss increasing their supply of oil, which could lower the price. They will leave that for further discussions next month among the oil ministers of the 12-country oil-exporting club.

Instead, this 3rd OPEC summit (after Venezuela in 2000 and in Vienna in 1975) intends to focus on three themes: providing petroleum, promoting prosperity, and protecting the planet. If that list sounds as if it were drawn up by a team of marketing and public relations specialists, that may well be the case. Over 300 Western journalists have been invited in to Saudi Arabia to cover the conference, and have been steered around hitherto tightly-guarded oil facilities. Even before the weekend meeting of the OPEC heads of state begins, which will include such firebrands as Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, there will be a two-day symposium on energy for sustainable development and OPEC's role in securing oil supplies and stabilizing the global economy.

Why is OPEC working so hard at sounding so nice? There are three main reasons. The first is that despite heady predictions of future oil demand, the fact is that the current high prices have launched a frenzy of exploration. Last week's find of a 5 billion barrel field under a salt pan off the coast of Brazil was one result; the oil finds in India's Rajastan province and the new offshore gas funds are another. Some Indian gas executives believe that far from being the world's second or third biggest oil importer within a decade, India could be close self-sufficient in fossil fuels by then.

The second reason why the world is being shown the new, warm and cuddly OPEC is that the high oil price is driving the world toward alternatives. At anything above $60 a barrel, Canada's tar sands become economically viable. This also explains the current frenzy in wind power stocks, with Germany's E.On paying Ireland Airtricity group $1.4 billion for North American wind assets and Britain sinking billions into the world's largest offshore wind farm in the Thames estuary.

The third reason why OPEC is at pains to make itself agreeable is that its members, particularly the Saudi hosts, seem to have remembered that warning from their former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Zaki Yamani, that the Stone Age did not end because of a shortage of stones. If oil becomes too costly, there are alternatives from tar sands to wind to nuclear power. And at the Los Angeles motor show this week Honda showed off its new car with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell where the engine used to be. OPEC's future is by no means guaranteed.