But the numbers game being played by Iraq and Iran, which shortly afterwards announced its own reserve hike to reclaim the second slot from the Iraqis, albeit with little scientific backing, has raised heckles in another Middle Eastern country.

Enter Saudi Arabia, the undisputed leader of the OPEC pack with its hefty 260 billion barrels of crude oil reserves.

Listening to Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi speak at a symposium celebrating OPEC's 50th anniversary, the message was clear and it was directed at Baghdad. "Saudi Arabia is a founding member of OPEC and it holds the world's largest crude oil reserves, has the biggest production capacity and is the largest oil exporting nation," Naimi said in a presentation at the start of the ceremony on October 18.

"This is a position that the kingdom will continue to hold for some time," he added, in what appeared to be a veiled message to other OPEC members such as Iraq and Iran not to challenge the oil giant.

Perhaps due to a scheduling problem or by design, none of the other 11 OPEC ministers attended the ceremony in Riyadh, where the organization was represented by its secretary-general, Abdalla el-Badri. This led some observers to note that it was unusual for invitations by the kingdom to be turned down by lesser members of the producers' club.

The seeds of what appears to be an attempt by some to position themselves for a realignment of power within an organization that has long been dominated by Saudi Arabia began last December.

That was when Iraqi oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani appeared to be laying down the gauntlet when he said that Iraq's oil production capacity would exceed 12 million b/d within six to seven years once the 11 oil fields offered up for development under long-term service contracts by foreign oil companies reached plateau production.

That 12 million number matches Saudi Arabia's current production capacity -- excluding the neutral zone shared with Kuwait which would take it up to 12.5 million b/d.

Yet Saudi Arabia, which has often stated as policy a desire to maintain oil market balance, retains some 4.5 million b/d of idle capacity with production running at around 8.1 million b/d, in line with OPEC production quotas from which Iraq is excluded.

Iraq, a founding member of OPEC -- which makes its absence from Riyadh more intriguing -- has been exempt from output restrictions as it rebuilds its energy infrastructure, which was decimated by decades of wars, first against Iran in 1980, the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the ensuing sanctions that hindered investment in its energy sector.

Now the sleeping giant awakes and the two largest Arab oil producing states appear to be heading for a showdown.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait and occupied the tiny emirate, the markets lost an estimated 5 million b/d, the combined production from both countries, as exports were halted.

Almost overnight, Saudi Arabia opened up the taps and made up for much of the lost oil, raising its output from 5 million b/d to 8 million b/d, which gave it a larger market share than it had before the invasion.

The question now is how long the Saudis will sit back and allow the Iraqis to ramp up production unchecked without OPEC restrictions while they have millions of barrels of oil idle.

Raad Alkadiri, partner and head of global risk at PFC Energy, believes that managing Iraq's revival will pose a challenge to OPEC in the next half century.

"This internal cohesion faces two potential and inter-related challenges in the medium term: the revival of Iraqi production; and the prospects for future demand growth," he told a largely Saudi audience in Riyadh.

In Iraq, the success of last year's two oil bidding rounds "raises the specter of a massive increase in oil production from that country within a relatively short period of time," he said.

Should the foreign oil companies awarded service contracts to develop 11 Iraqi fields meet the targets they have promised, Iraqi output could rise to almost 12 million b/d by 2017. This would mean, Alkadiri said, that Iraq, with current production of around 2.3 million b/d, would "achieve in seven years what it took Saudi Arabia 70 years to do."

While PFC doubts that these huge incremental increases will be achieved, Alkadiri said that "dismissing the pace and scale of Iraq's output increases would be a mistake for OPEC .. .managing this production increase in a coordinated fashion -- and incorporating Iraq into the OPEC quota system -- will be OPEC's biggest internal challenge, particularly given the spare capacity that key member states are already sitting on..."

With the birthday celebrations now over, OPEC may have to accept that middle age is the time for a health check.     

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