Oil prices at $80 a barrel should be a source of happiness to crude oil producing countries. But the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is not happy.

Abdalla el-Badri, Opec secretary general, said in its first response to the current record prices that oil prices were high and would not last, because they are not supported by oil market fundamentals.

“Prices are high. We are not favour of high oil prices,” Mr el-Badri told a small group of journalists, including myself. “I don’t think it’s permanent.”

“The fundamentals do not support the price at this time,” Mr El-Badri said after Opec this week agreed to increase its production by 500,000 barrels a day.

For Opec, the price reaction to its supply hike has been a blow. The oil cartel presented the decision as its contribution to prop up the world economy hit by the current credit squeeze.

“We care about you,” was Opec’s message on the day of the announcement.

But instead of prices cooling down, as the cartel hoped, crude oil cost surged hours later to a new all-time high of $80.20 a barrel. And oil analysts and the International Energy Agency, the industrialised countries’ energy watchdog, instead of welcoming the production hike, said that it was “too little, too late.”

The price surge has been a bad coincidence, Mr el-Badri explained, saying that Opec’s decision came as a tropical storm hit several US refineries and just a day after rebels blow up several natural gas pipelines in Mexico.

Mr el-Badri has a point here, but that is not going to change the public perception of Opec in consumer countries.

So we have the answers to the questions we posed during the day, here and here.

Opec did raise production, suprising some, but not anyone who listened to PFC Energy last week. (FT stories may require a subscription). And the 500,000 barrel a day increase was from current production of about 26.75m b/d, not the officially agreed level of 25.85m set at Abuja last December.

However, the International Energy Agency, which tries to do for oil consumers what Opec does for the producers, described the move as "a smaller increase than we would have liked," even if it was more than anyone would have expected a few weeks ago. And the reaction in the markets has been to push US crude up by about 80 cents, as of mid-afternoon New York time.

One factor in the market reaction may be the type of crude that Opec will be adding to the market. Its oil is sour – ie higher in sulphur – so it needs more refining to be turned into usable products, and in the US in particular, refinery capacity is in short supply. So the effect of today’s announcement for US light sweet crude prices – the West Texas Intermediate benchmark, for example – may be limited.

If the world stays out of recession, and oil demand holds up, expect the same pressure on Opec for another move at the next ministerial meeting, in Abu Dhabi on December 5, or even earlier, at the Opec summit in Riyadh on November 17-18.

As I write – about 10am European time – Opec ministers in Vienna are still debating whether to announce an increase in oil production. The comments of the ministers and officials arriving for a working breakfast with non-Opec countries earlier this morning were less than illuminating. The most telling was from Abdallah el-Badri, Opec’s secretary-general, who described near-$80 oil as a “problem”.

His choice of word shows how the caricature of Opec as short-term revenue maximisers is misplaced, and does a lot to explain why a production increase is now on the table.

There has been a lot of talk (including in the FT) about the how Opec remembers the Jakarta meeting in November 1997, when a rise in production was followed by the coincidence of the Asian financial crisis with two warm winters, which drove oil down to $10.

But there is another parallel that is perhaps more relevant – and particularly apposite today, on the sixth anniversary ‑ the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when Opec, led by Saudi Arabia, helped steady nerves by promising that the oil would keep flowing. The group raised its production in January 2003, after Venezuela’s production was disrupted by a strike. (FT stories may require subscription.)

The financial turmoil resulting from the subprime crisis has been less dramatic, of course. But its economic implications could ultimately be more profound. Today is a chance for Opec to join the US Federal Reserve and the other central banks and authorities in playing its part in keeping the world economy out of recession.