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OPEC’s meeting next week may be a quiet affair, but it portends a bigger war brewing within the cartel pitting Saudi Arabia against Iran and Iraq.

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As the United States raced over the past five years toward becoming a global petroleum powerhouse, the world’s biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia quietly seized a market milestone from America: the largest source of peak summer demand.

From June through August, when temperatures in Riyadh routinely rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), Saudi Arabia diverts as much as a tenth of its crude output to fuel power plants that run full tilt to meet surging demand from air conditioners.

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There is near-unanimous consensus that the group that controls close to 39 per cent of global production will not retreat from its policy to maintain output when it meets in Vienna on June 5.

Last November, Saudi Arabia, the de facto OPEC leader, convinced other members to keep pumping oil to drive down prices and flush out high-cost producers, notably the North American shale players.