Oil prices charged above the $50 a barrel level on Thursday, leading a broad advance across commodity markets which rallied strongly after the Federal Reserve announced plans on Wednesday to buy $300bn in US Treasuries as the US central bank aggressively expanded its efforts to counter the financial crisis. Equity markets have also staged a rally.

Traders said the Fed’s shift was seen as very positive for commodity markets as it should support economic recovery and would push investors out of government debt and into higher-risk asset classes.

Carola Hoyos wrote last month about the more favourable terms that oil companies can get in producing nations as falling prices shift power back towards the oil majors. Iraq is a particularly strong example of this – companies such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Total will now receive stakes of 75 per cent rather than 49 per cent if their bid wins.

At the Opec meeting that is under way in Vienna, Iraq’s oil minister Hussein Shahristani told Carola about those sweetened terms.

But Libya’s oil minister, Shokri Ghanem, says resource-rich countires will remain important. Watch the videos after the jump:

Opec’s decision on Sunday against a further round of cuts was welcomed by consuming nations from around the world. The cartel has used the moment of enhanced credibility to tell the G20 that it was now the turn of rich countries to boost the economy.

But Opec’s decision not to cut may have had another reason. Some countries are just not able or willing to make any further reductions. Indeed, despite having promised to boost their compliance to near 100 per cent by the end of May, laggards Venezuela and Iran don’t appear inclined to follow through.