What will happen if oil prices surpass $80 a barrel, as Goldman Sachs predicted a few months ago?

This week, the company’s analysts updated their forecast and now believe prices could hit $90 by the end of the year. Their counterparts at JP Morgan have gone even further, predicting a price of $100 a barrel as part of a new commodity “supercycle.”

All this might be possible in a world where OPEC and its non-OPEC allies did not exist. Although I’m pretty sure that OPEC+ members are happy to see oil prices at this level without any effort on their part, I am also almost sure that this is not what Saudi Arabia or Russia wanted.

The reasons for this are very clear. Saudi Arabia does not want to see the US and other major consumers complaining about oil prices and slowing economic recovery, while Russia does not want to see US shale-oil wells returning to production in high quantities.

In a world with an oil price of $100 a barrel, anything is possible, including Russia drilling in the Arctic, and oil being pumped from pre-salt layers in the deep oceans off the coast of Brazil. But this situation is artificial and could only exist for a limited time.

Such was the case between 2011 and 2014, when oil-price increases were unsustainable and collapsed in the face of higher levels of shale oil production and output from Canada, Mexico, China and Brazil.

It would be difficult for this scenario to be repeated now, for political and technical reasons. Not only would many governments oppose it, companies would find it hard to quickly recruit the workers they need for a return to the widespread drilling that was taking place up until 2014.

Everyone learned the lessons of that experience and no one from the service companies side would plan for oil to once again reach such unsustainable prices. Even OPEC countries learned the lessons of 2014 crash. Behind closed doors Ali Al-Naimi, the Saudi former oil minister, told his counterparts that they should not have let oil to reach $100 a barrel and it was a mistake for which they paid the price.

I do not expect the OPEC+ alliance to allow oil to reach $100 a barrel without doing something to prevent it. Everyone can live with a price between $60 and $70.

Therefore at their next meeting, on Oct. 1, I do not expect OPEC+ members to reach a decision in favor of leaving oil prices at the current level of about $80, but they might decide to do nothing about it because it is the result of seasonal factors.

Moving on from short term to longer-term prospects, OPEC remains bullish about the likelihood of a recovery in demand and the industry, as we saw in their annual World Oil Outlook (they refer to it as an oil outlook, although it is more about energy in general with an emphasis on oil).

Will we see oil demand reach 104 million barrels a day in the next three-to-five years? Maybe, but it will only happen if the price is not at or near $100 a barrel, unless the world is still against investing in hydrocarbons.

This is a more serious issue than the talk about going all electric to anyone who knows the 101 of the oil markets. But who would listen to OPEC?

• Wael Mahdi is senior business editor at Arab News and co-author of “OPEC in a shale oil world: where to next?” Twitter: @waelmahdi