Roger, oil is traded on the open market and price is mnipulated by OPEC supply and demand outputs. The fact that you say the meeting was secret and the issues not known to this day does not cause any red flags as after all energy is a matter of national security.
The recent run up in oil was similar to all of the other bubbles in the past decades and very similar to the condiitons during that caused the 1929 stock market crash. This occurs with any irratioanal investing as we saw with irrational demand of stocks in the the eighties and nineties, the interfernece with supply and demand in the housing market and the irrational investing there and more recently with the market prices of oil which again were pushed higher due to irrational expectation of where oil prices would go.
Bottom line, energy costs are directly correlated to the economy undeniably.