The falling U.S. dollar’s effect on oil revenues overshadowed Saudi Arabia’s promises to fight global warming at this weekend’s Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries summit in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia had to fight off an attempt by Iran and Venezuela to get the group to discuss pricing oil in different currencies. Hosting the summit, King Abdullah committed $300 million to research climate change, while OPEC leaders pledged to cut emissions from oil and gas production.

The dollar’s 10 percent decline this year has cut the buying power of revenue from record oil prices above $90 a barrel. A further drop may harden OPEC’s reluctance to raise supply in a bid to ease prices. Ministers at the summit said the oil market was well-supplied and recent gains were due to speculation and beyond the group’s control.

“OPEC is in a price paralysis conundrum,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Saudi British Bank, a unit of HSBC Bank Plc. “They do care about the dollar, but if they say publicly they worry it will show they care even more.”

Gulf Arab countries, most of whose currencies are pegged to the U.S. dollar, will jointly consider a revaluation in December in a bid to combat inflation, Abdul Rahman al-Attiyah, the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council said in Riyadh today. The council includes OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

Saudi Arabia has no plans to revalue the Riyal against the U.S. dollar or fix its value to a basket of currencies, Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf said today in Riyadh

Venezuela’s Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that OPEC finance ministers will study the dollar’s decline.

“The dollar is free fall, everyone should be worried about it,” Chavez said in comments to reporters in Riyadh today. “The fall of the dollar is not the fall of the dollar — it’s the fall of the American empire…”

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