The diplomatic crisis between Saudi Arabia and Iran presents a new test for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries at a particularly challenging time for the oil-producing cartel. The 13-nation group that controls more than a third of the world’s oil supplies has been able to function in the past even when its members were at war. Iraq and Iran sent representatives to OPEC meetings during their war in the 1980s, and Saddam Hussein’s oil officials sat at the table with representatives of Kuwait’s exiled government after Iraq invaded in 1990. But the confrontation over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric , Nemer al-Nemer, could prove to be an even trickier situation for OPEC because of the sectarian anger it has unleashed across the Middle East in countries whose economies have been slammed by depressed oil prices. Saudi Arabia is primarily a Sunni Muslim country, while […]