Oil's recent dip back into the $30s per barrel may be enough to get some OPEC members to curb their bickering and consider joint action — especially if oil plummets again. Considering a deal and agreeing to one are two different things, but talk that the cartel would discuss its options sparked a rally in oil prices Monday. "All of a sudden, the price narrative was divergent from the OPEC message. They see the wisdom of changing the rhetoric … It's no surprise they'd go back to the playbook that worked successfully," said RBC's head of commodity strategy Helima Croft.

After recovering from the winter's lows, oil plunged back into bear market territory last week, and reports surfaced that the cartel plans to meet on the sidelines of an energy conference in Algeria in late September. On Monday, OPEC President Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, Qatar energy minister, confirmed that meeting, and oil rose nearly 3 percent. West Texas Intermediate settled at $43.02 per barrel.

People work at the Halfaya oilfield in Amara, southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. Essam Al-Sudani | Reuters

"One thing they really could do is bring forward the Venezuelan proposals to explore production bands for individual countries," said Croft. She said they would not likely take action but could form a committee to study the Venezuelan idea.

"Even talk of a new mechanism would be enough to change the sentiment if you have people thinking OPEC might be out there and be relevant again. The thing I took away from June was they were saying, 'Don't assign us to the dustbin. We're still relevant,'" said Croft.

But since OPEC agreed in November if 2014 to let the market set oil prices, some of the hardest hit members have worked unsuccessfully to bring about an oil production freeze that would give OPEC more control over pricing through production. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest exporter, successfully led the cartel to end production quotas and leave pricing to the market. But OPEC members and non-members alike continued to pump high levels of oil, flooding the market with even more crude and driving the price down into the upper $20s per barrel in February of this year. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said it would not agree to any deals on production unless all producers agreed. At the same time, Iran has refused to agree to curb production since it has been in the process of returning the barrels to market that it was unable to export while under sanction for its nuclear program. Iran's re-entry has been met with price wars as producers struggle to hold and build market share. "There's still this incredible battle. This is the problem with having U.S. production and having less demand in the U.S. Everything becomes a battle for Asia. It's also internally with in OPEC. Iraq has been stuffing a lot of barrels into China. It's a fierce battle for Asian market access. They're competing against Russia," Croft said.

'There may be a little bit more to it this time'