RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The marketing for OPEC's third-ever summit meeting this week describes what the Saudis were hoping to convey by hosting it: Providing Petroleum, Promoting Prosperity, Protecting the Planet.

With crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel and gasoline in Dallas at the threshold of $3 a gallon again, OPEC's cheery reassurance won't convince many.

Still, the summit of the 12 OPEC heads of state – there have been only two others in the organization's 47-year history – comes with plenty of new players in oil markets that make it hard for OPEC or anyone else to know exactly what's going on.

Along with supply and demand, the spot and futures markets for oil are running on rumor and speculation. And some of that may be coming from within the OPEC states themselves, where portfolio managers aren't paying much attention to what the oil ministries say.

For members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, interest rates matter more than oil prices. They have huge budget surpluses managed in what are called sovereign wealth funds. The earnings from these funds are greater than what either country gets for its oil exports.

Abu Dhabi, the largest of the seven statelets of the United Arab Emirates, has an investment fund worth more than $875 billion. If you manage a fund like that and your mission is an annual 10 percent return, you can make a lot of markets quake. Other oil producers from Norway to Russia have hundreds of billions in such funds. They can move gold prices and foreign exchange markets, and they may even be among the speculators in oil.

It might not be smart to "double down on oil," as energy expert Daniel Yergin put it – oil producers relying on oil earnings who then ratchet up their bets by putting money into speculative oil markets. But stranger things have happened.

"Oil and other commodities are seen as a hedge against the dollar," said Mr. Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Massachusetts.

"Half a year ago, people hadn't heard the term 'sovereign wealth fund,' " he said. "Now it just points out the reality that there's a tremendous shift in global income going on."

Cambridge Energy estimates OPEC earnings will more than triple from the $199 billion in 2002 to $688 billion this year. The member states are trying to absorb this money – the Saudis have more than $500 billion in announced infrastructure projects – but it's not possible for them to spend it as fast as they are making it.

China is in a similar position with its profit from exports of manufactured goods. It has built $1.4 trillion in reserves.

That's the money that's apparently pumping up oil, gold and some currencies against the U.S. dollar.

Oil inventories have been falling in a pre-winter season when they should be rising. That suggests shortfall, and a price surge is the surest way to bring balance back through that ruthless force known as "demand destruction."

But OPEC argues there's more than enough oil out there to satisfy demand. Its analysis of oil markets shows spot prices higher than future prices, which suggests prices are about to drop.

Nigerian Oil Minister Odein Ajumogobia told Reuters Saturday that no one should be surprised if oil pulls back to $80 a barrel over the next three weeks.

With the dollar falling at the same time, however, OPEC and other oil producers are losing buying power.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars. With the housing-related credit mess in the United States, the Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates, and many worry that the United States is about to dip into recession, and all that means a lower value for the dollar.

Canada finds itself on the upside of these two trends. It is the biggest supplier of oil to the United States, along with plenty of other commodities.

In five months, the Canadian dollar has shot up 25 percent in value against the U.S. dollar.

The Canadian dollar is worth more than $1.10 U.S., and many Canadian sellers are howling as their customers head south and their exports get priced out of the U.S. market.

Jason Myers, president of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said last week in Washington that he thinks "20 percent of the [Canadian] dollar value right now is speculative" – yet another suggestion that large amounts of capital are banging around looking for high returns.