As we discussed last Friday, the recent drop in oil prices prompted OPEC to meet earlier than planned to discuss possible production cuts, and that is exactly what the group of oil producing countries has decided to do, with an announced 1.5 million barrel a day production cut.

It should not come as too much of a surprise to hear about today's plans. Oil has been falling sharply over the past few months, with a $40 price jump in the last month alone. Over the summer we were talking about the record high oil prices, and it was only this past July when prices were nearing $150 a barrel. How times have changed.

Even with today's announcement, oil is down again, as the market continues to worry about a spreading global recession. Earlier in the session oil dropped as low as $61.00 a barrel, and is currently trading down $3.24 to $62.68.

After some sharp drops in oil this week, the precious crude is trading up a bit today to close out the week, as investors are betting that OPEC is going to step in and announce some production cuts aimed at curbing the sell off the market has been seeing recently.

As we already know, oil traders have been sending prices lower as global recession fears have stoked concerns that a broad economic slowdown is going to lead to a drop in global demand. While that is debatable, it is still reason enough for concern, and has kept prices in a virtual free fall the past couple months.

Before oil's most recent declines, OPEC was supposed to next meet in December, but then decided to move up their meeting to November to discuss the current output levels. Today they announced that they were going to move that date up even a bit more, and will gather next week instead, and traders are expecting to hear the group announce reductions in its output.

It seems like there is always something to worry about these days. Over the summer, the economy was showing signs of what was to come, but the main concern on most of our minds was not the overall economy. Instead, we were worried about the $4 gasoline that we were pumping into our cars.

Now, the tables have turned, and all we are thinking about is the crashing economy. But at least we can take a little pleasure out of the fact that gas is falling, and should continue to drop.

It wasn't that long ago that we were feeling the full brunt of record high gasoline prices. It was July 17, in fact, when the national average hit its peak of $4.114 a gallon. While prices are still running at historically high levels, they have come well off their summer highs, and are currently sitting at an average of $3.48 a gallon nationwide for regular unleaded. A pretty nice pullback, to say the least.

Oil prices have been falling today, helped by the release of the weekly inventory report which showed larger than expected reserves in the precious crude.

Going into today's report, analysts were expecting to see the Department of Energy announce that oil inventories fell by 1.9 million barrels last week, but in fact we only saw a decline of 1.6 million barrels.

Gasoline is probably more on the minds of most consumers, and what we saw in gasoline demand was even more extreme. Analysts had expected to see a rise of about 500,000 barrels of gasoline supplies last week, but the actual increase came in at 2.9 million barrels, a clear sign that high gasoline prices have forced many of us to cut back on our usage.

Oil continued to remain strong with prices moving slightly higher this morning, ahead of today's weekly inventory report. The main reason for prices remaining strong continues to be worries over oil supplies.

Traders have pushed prices through the $142 mark this morning, with the precious crude trading as high as $142.45, but have cooled off a bit and are now sitting at $141.06, which is $0.09 higher on the day. As Douglas McIntyre discussed earlier, typically such high oil prices are expected to put a crimp in demand, but this time around that may not be the case at all. Already many analysts are stating that demand may not fall too much, even with the record high gasoline prices.

We should get a slightly clearer picture on just how true that is later today when the Department of Energy releases the weekly inventory numbers. Last week inventories increased, but that is expected to reverse this week, and analysts are predicting this week's oil inventory numbers to actually show a decline of around 1.2 million barrels (compared with a 800,000 barrel increase that was reported last week).

Oil is starting the week off trading a little lower today, but Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) is looking for oil prices to continue to move higher, and expects to see $150 much sooner than previously thought.

While speaking today at a conference in Malaysian's capital, Kuala Lumpur, Jeffrey Currie stated that the possibility that we were going to see $150 oil was real, and that he believed that we would hit that time sometime this summer. Goldman has been bullish on oil prices for some time now, and last month went so far as to state that we would be seeing $200 oil at some point within the next two years.

While $150 oil may sound insane, it really is not that big of a difference from where we are now. Today prices have retreated a bit back down to around $136.25, but Friday they were close to breaking through the $140 mark, after trading up more than $11 and hitting a high on of $139.12. All it would really take is just one or two more days like that to make $150 oil a reality.

It seems like everyday we are talking about the same news... rising oil prices. Today oil busted through the $135 mark and traded up as high as $135.09. Currently we are seeing oil at $133.91.

There are three main factors at work today helping push prices higher; supply concerns, global demand estimates, and once again, the weak U.S. dollar. Of the three, the weak U.S. dollar has received most of the blame recently for the run up in oil prices.

As we have discussed many times before, any time the dollar shows weakness traders will rush into commodities as a natural way to hedge against the falling dollar. That is exactly what we have been seeing for most of this year, and that has continued into today, as the dollar has continued to drop.

Yesterday, we took a look at falling oil prices, and that trend has continued today, sending prices below the $100 mark. As we mentioned yesterday, the selling was coming as traders have turned their attention to demand, and that is the same story that we are seeing again today.

Right now prices are trading just slightly higher than the psychological $100 barrier, at $100.31, but only a short time ago prices had retreated all the way down to $98.65.

One thing that we always like to keep track of is the weekly inventory reports from the U.S. Department of Energy. These reports are typically issued each Wednesday, and going into yesterday's report analysts had been looking to see a rise of 2.3 million barrels. While the market was given news of rising inventories, the numbers were actually much lower than had been expected, with an increase of 200,000 barrels.

As we discussed earlier today, oil prices had been falling this morning in anticipation of a bearish oil inventory report, and now prices are moving even more to the downside after the release of the actual report from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Earlier this morning, prices had dropped $2.90, but after the actual report became available prices have fallen even more, and are currently trading down $4.59 to $104.83. What is a bit surprising is that prices have extended so far even though the report was less bearish than had been predicted.

Analysts had been looking to see an increase of 2.3 million barrels, but the actual report showed that inventories rose "only" by 200,000 barrels. Usually, seeing a smaller than expected jump would lead you to believe that prices would rally, but the market has shifted a bit, and we are now seeing more attention being given to demand.

Oil prices have continued to rise today, jumping to as high as $109.70 earlier in the day, and currently sitting at $109.62.

Fueling today's charge is, once again, the weak dollar. Yesterday, the euro set yet another record high against the U.S. dollar, moving up as high as $1.5464.

Also bringing money into oil today was a report from the International Energy Agency stating that demand for oil is going to remain high, due to growing demand in emerging markets, most notably China. Along with China, India continues to keep high demand. Both countries are going to remain large consumers as a result of the fact that they have fuel subsidies that reduce incentives for conservation.

After getting off to a strong start earlier in the session, oil prices have traded lower in mid-day action on a growing assumption that OPEC will elect to raise its output quota during next week's meeting. It should come as no surprise really that we are starting to hear some OPEC rumors considering that oil prices have ballooned by over 40% since August and have been testing even inflation-adjusted all time highs in its pursuit of the $100 mark.

As fellow BloggingStocks writer Joseph Lazzaro pointed out earlier this morning, prices had risen as high as $99.11 this morning in reaction to lower temperatures, but that has all changed as traders have instead focused on news from over the weekend indicating that the thirteen nation oil cartel OPEC may be considering production increases next week.

The main cause for the rising belief in OPEC adjustments comes from a statement this weekend by Iranian Oil Minister Iranian Gholam Hossein Nozari, who stated that his country would be willing to consider lifting its quota. According to Nozari, "if statistics and data indicate there is a need to produce more oil, we have the capacity to increase the output and supply more oil for the market." However, he made it clear that he did not believe that the world was currently facing a shortage of the precious crude.