Members of Opec have discussed holding an emergency meeting if crude continues to slide , according to Nigeria’s oil minister, in a sign of their growing alarm over the impact of a lower oil price on their economies. The comments by Diezani Alison-Madueke come three months after the cartel’s decision to hold production at 30m barrels a day, even as the oil price has plunged since mid-June. That move, driven by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies, marked a sharp deviation from Opec’s traditional strategy of adjusting production to keep prices high. The group’s main objective is now to defend market share, despite dramatically reduced revenues. The price plunge has forced energy companies all over the world to rewrite their investment plans , and caused a major slowdown in the US shale oil industry. But it has also thrown the fiscal balances of big oil producers such […]