Production will be cut. Supplies to the rest of the world will be curbed. And inflation will rise just a little bit higher. No one ever expected the oil-cartel Opec(+), led by Saudi Arabia, to be friendly to the West, or to help out when it was needed. Even so, its decision this week to effectively side with Russia, and to make the energy crisis even worse, may quickly backfire. In reality, Opec was already in long-term decline. Picking a fight with the US will just make that worse.

It was certainly the kind of news the energy markets didn’t need. Just as it was getting over the loss of Russia’s crucial supplies, and as the price started to come back down again – from a peak of $130 a barrel soon after the invasion of Ukraine it was down below $80 again by the start of last week – Opec decided to cut back on its own production. The result? Prices have jumped again, governments already struggling with the huge cost of energy bailouts will be in even more of a mess, and central bankers will be worried that inflation will start edging back up again.

It is not hard to see the motivation of Opec’s leaders. They are jealous of the US’s revival as a major energy provider, they want to preserve their own lock on the market, and they may well want to help out Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who, while not a member of the cartel, has worked alongside it for the last twenty years. It is a direct slap in the face for the US, and especially President Biden, who has been trying to persuade Opec to increase production, not decrease it.

And yet, while it may work in the short-term, it will backfire over the next few years. There are two big problems. First, the US will be very annoyed, and will step up its own production to help make up the difference, as well as releasing oil from its strategic reserves at crucial moments to drive the price down at the moments that hurt the cartel the most. Second, Opec is an organisation in long-term decline. Oil may have spiked this year, but in reality its power has been waning for years, and anyone who thinks it can hold the world to ransom is living in a 1970s time-warp. All the developed countries are moving as quickly as they can away from fossil fuels, and towards renewable sources of energy.

Pushing up the price in the middle of a crisis will only accelerate that. In reality, Opec’s members are going to need all the friends in the developed world it can get – but its latest move has simply driven them further away.