OPEC said Wednesday it wants a "solution" to end record-high oil prices, including an examination of the role speculators and governments of consuming and producing nations, when it meets later this month in Saudi Arabia, Bloomberg News reported.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and holder of the largest proved oil reserves, said it wants heads of state from consumer/producer nations to attend the June 22 meeting in Jeddah, Reuters reported, although it was unclear if any heads of state outside the cartel will attend the meeting.

A International Energy Agency official said the IEA's Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka would attend the meeting.

After a week-long pullpack with many traders calling a correction in a bull market, oil's seemingly inexorable drive to a price few individuals or companies can afford continued Wednesday. Oil closed up $5.11 to $136.42 per barrel after the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced a below-consensus 4.6-million-barrel decline in weekly oil inventories.

Although OPEC's previous meeting in Rome led to no new insights regarding oil, OPEC General Secretary Abdalla el-Badri told Bloomberg News this meeting will be different: "This one is different. This one is specifically to tackle the high oil prices, why they are high, who is to blame," el-Badri said. "Is this a real shortage in the market, or speculation, or the dollar? What is wrong?"

If the industrialized - - and the industrializing - - world needs a wake-up call regarding the development of alternate and renewable energy sources, the nations need look no further than the International Energy Agency's research.

IEA projects that between now and 2015, the world will need an additional 37.5 million barrels per day of oil to meet rising demand. Currently, the world use about 84 million barrels of oil per day. [Oil closed Thursday down 91 cents to $95.46. A convergence of events, including strong global economic growth and geopolitical concerns, has pushed oil's price up more than 135% in three years; traders see oil testing the $100 per barrel mark in the weeks ahead.]

And here's the riveting statistic from the IEA: current oil production development plans will add only about 25 million barrels per day by 2015.

And what about that 12.5-million barrel gap? The gap, the IEA said, must be made up through further investment or easing of demand.

If the gap is not filled, a supply shortfall will result, the IEA said. "'A supply-side crunch in the period to 2015, involving an abrupt escalation in oil prices, cannot be ruled out," the agency said.

Oil Analysis: While oil consumption increases are expected in every region in the world and by dozens of nations, the importance of the United States and China in marshaling any energy coalition cannot be underscored enough. Each is the primary engine of growth in its hemisphere. Each has the private, public, and university-based economies of scale necessary to both implement conservation measures and development new energy sources - - practices that smaller nations in each region would undoubtedly mirror. Finally, each - - by virtue of the sheer size of their consumer bases - - can decisively "move the needle" toward increased energy efficiency and, along with it, toward less CO2 in the atmosphere, in the years and decades ahead.

At last, U.S. investors who want a piece of the ethanol game may have a pure play that's solidly profitable. South America's largest ethanol company, Cosan, filed Monday to raise $2 billion through the United States financial markets. According to Dow Jones, Cosan will use about $650 million in IPO proceeds for a new ethanol plant. $500 million to expand existing sugar and ethanol plants, and $325 million to build plants to generate electricity from left over sugar cane.

Cosan reported net income of $346.5 million in fiscal year 2007, and its size and strength have led to speculation that Archer Daniels Midland (NYSE: ADM) may make a run at buying the company. The plans for an IPO make that seem less likely however.

Cosan may have missed the speculative ethanol bull market of last year that sent companies like Pacific Ethanol (NASDAQ: PEIX) into the stratosphere, but the fact that Cosan actually makes money -- and lots of it -- gives it the making of a potentially very successful IPO.

Cosan's sugar-based ethanol is probably more efficient than the corn-based ethanol that is being produced in the United States, but huge government tariffs and farm subsidies will put the company at a disadvantage in the United States for now. But if gas prices continue to soar and pressue mounts in Washington to remove the tarrifs, Cosan would probably become a major player in the ethanol market here. If that happens, investors who scoop up Cosan at the IPO will be richly rewarded.