Saudi Arabia stuck to the script at the meeting in Vienna last Friday, keeping the 30 million barrels per day target that has been in place for more than three and a half years.

"The ceiling is the same. You will be surprised how amicable the meeting was," Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters.

OPEC secretary-general Abdullah El-Badri said there was "a commitment from all the ministers" that they would adhere to the target.

Perth-based M-O Kin said that while the expected decision of OPEC to keep production steady will have a levelling effect on prices, Australian companies producing overseas were benefiting from the lowering Australian dollar which was effectively providing a "semi-hedge" from the lower oil prices.

"The Aussie dollar is falling, so if they produce in the US or anywhere in the world and are selling in US dollars, when they translate that back, they are effectively getting a higher Australian dollar per barrel price than it was before when oil prices were over $100 but the Australian dollar was nearly one-for-one," M-O Kin said.

"It's not the same doom and gloom as if it was a one-for-one exchange rate and oil prices were low. That would probably be particularly bad."

As for companies getting projects up in Australia, it was still tough, but M-O Kin said it was far from the end of the world.

"It's not easy," he said. "If they can get their projects up in Australia and sell in American dollars that would be great, but the downward pressure from oil prices will still make it a little more difficult for the smaller companies to get projects off the ground.

"However, $US65/barrel still does allow the good, economic projects off the ground. It's just that that oil prices and the markets being where they are at the moment, everyone is a bit afraid. But there are still projects out there that still stack up on the numbers and should actually be invested in."

Things could get worse before they get better, however, with Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh saying that the country could ramp up oil production by an extra 1MMbpd within six months of sanctions being removed.

"We do not need any agreement. We will return to the market any time sanctions are lifted," Zanganeh said as he exited the OPEC meeting.

OPEC's death knell?

Iran's optimism also belies deeper concerns among analysts of OPEC's falling influence, not just in the face of the US shale revolution which Saudi Arabia tried to stop but elsewhere.

Global financial markets expert Patrick Young said this morning said the US shale boom was the oil industry's version of a digital revolution - and it won't end there, with ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance remarking last week that break-even costs for US unconventional oil production had been cut by nearly a third since last November.

They're still falling - with $60 in sight, and $50 on the horizon, Young said.

He added that the fraccing innovation would, "like the web enabling our interaction, soon go global, benefitting every continent which embraces the future. This process will genuinely reorient the world's Middle Eastern-centric oil cartel".

"One day (soon) we will look back at the way the world waited with bated breath to evaluate the latest, often arbitrary moves, from a cartel which held energy prices in its thrall for a half century and more ... and wonder at how technology has freed us," Young said.

"The frac for freedom may have begun in the US but our energy future is already being driven by unconventional high-tech production becoming the norm across the world.

"In the near future, expect Russia and other hydrocarbon powers to be energised as the Arctic brings us bounteous sources of cheap power to drive the world's prosperity."