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Reporter's Notebook: OPEC oil ministers slide on access

Kim Hjelmgaard
USA TODAY

VIENNA — OPEC decided to let falling prices fend for themselves Thursday amid a trinity of confusing gravitational forces: over-supply, falling demand and perhaps less relevancy for the group that supplies 40% of global output.

Commodities journalists and analysts here in Vienna who regularly cover the Organization of the Petroleum Countries' major get-together — where price stability and output levels are hotly debated by the bloc's 12 energy ministers — tell me it's always the same.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi speaks to journalists ahead of the OPEC meeting in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 27, 2014.

Everyone wants access to the oil ministers. No one is really given it.

The compromise is this: Members of the press get herded into a small hallway that quickly turns into a standing-room-only affair. An OPEC official looks at his watch and says "go."

Reporters from every continent then rush up several flights of stairs, around a corner and finally into a big room where they can confront said ministers with their presumably probing questions as they sit comfortably in leather chairs looking composed and tight-lipped.

Access is nominally on a first-come-first-served basis; really it's more like frenzied sharks that smell blood with a bit of a garage-sale atmosphere thrown in for good measure.

Do they say anything? Not really.

Venezuela's energy minister was so softly spoken that the microphones and dictaphones definitely invaded personal space. Iraq's oil minister spoke a lot, about all sorts of things — not much of it appeared to be oil-related.

That's when I spied Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia's negotiator in chief, and the man who effectively calls the shots at OPEC.

He sat, flanked by two Saudi delegates, in a halo of quiet space. Where was everyone? Bloomberg? Reuters? Surely this is the guy to talk to. So I approached. Kim Hjelmgaard. USA TODAY. All that. My pitch.

What I know now is that the other journalists knew in advance not to approach him.

He looked at me — with pity I want to say, for dramatic effect, but it was just a look — raised his hand slightly, and gently, almost imperceptibly, motioned me on.

As he did oil markets several hours later.

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