Most probably missed it because it was late, but we discussed this idea a bit on the 12/4 drumbeat http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4831#comment-440612
An excerpt of one of my comments:
"If I was running a cartel, rather than trying to guess how much oil I needed to put on, or take off the market to reach my price target, I would just set my price, then observe the market and adjust accordingly. For example: OPEC could announce a price of $75 tomorrow.... not a penny less (adjusted for crude quality of course). Of their ~40MM capacity, they may observe that they only have takers for 36MM. They could then adjust production down acordingly. On the other hand, if 41MM was sold, they could bump price up to 80 (or sell to the 40MM highest bidders). Announcing such a policy would be quite a shock initially, but after a while it would work quite well. You could adjust price or supply weekly or bi-weekly as needed to meet your targets. Opec's lack of unity would be problematic,as it is now, but I think Saudi Arabia could pull it off by themselves if need be. Announcing tomorrow that they would not accept less than $75 would probably not reduce global quantity demanded by more than 2 or 3MMbo/d ~33% of current production (9MMbo/d), but revenue, at $75 vs. $40 would actually increase. The current system just seems so clumsy and is clearly inneffective. Setting a price floor really shouldn't be this hard for a cartel with as much cash and as as much market share as OPEC has. The first month might be rocky, but after that the new system would increase revenue, and probably add stability to the whole system.