Last week I discussed the economic and political pressures OPEC was facing as it sought to reduce inventory limits.

Now comes news that some OPEC officials are floating a trial balloon about the consortium’s target price for oil by the end of 2009.

The magic number? $60 per barrel, if you believe OPEC officials in Algeria and Libya, who came in way under officials from Saudi Arabia, who earlier in the week set a target price of $75 per barrel of oil.

What’s a reasonable price?  With oil currently at around $48 per barrel, and given the continuing weakness of the global economy, it would seem that $60 is more of a realistic target.

To drive its pricing policy, OPEC has decided to keep output targets where they are right now and enforce supply curbs more strictly. I think it’s pretty clear that OPEC believes that output cuts have been successful in alleviating excess oil inventories from global markets.

The move comes amid some evidence that output cuts so far are starting to remove excess oil from the market. OPEC began tightening its oil spigots back in December of 2008, when the price of oil was hovering around $32 per barrel.

That has generated a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking among oil industry insiders – specifically that OPEC is setting a floor for oil prices by reducing excess oil stockpiles.

"One of the reasons why OPEC felt able to roll over quotas was that they do appear to have set a floor for prices," said Mike Wittner of Societe Generale, told the Associated Press. Wittner agrees with the $60 price target by December, 2009, putting him squarely in the camp with Algeria and Libya.

He forecasts Brent crude will average $60 in the last three months of 2009, up from $45 in the current quarter.

"According to a lot of the balances including ours, if you have OPEC holding steady or cutting a bit more, you get a big, counter-seasonal stock draw in the third quarter," he said.

We’ll know a lot more after April 2, when the G20 nations meet once again, this time to figure out ways to come up with specific measures to bolster the flagging global economy. The rumor is that one priority will be targeted at boosting the price of oil (primarily to take economic pressure off embattled oil-producing countries).

I’m also hearing from industry insiders that oil companies – British Petroleum reportedly being one of them – are beginning to withdraw oil from storage facilities. Historically, that has usually been a harbinger of a resurgent oil market. That said, every time we hear from one G20 economist that the global recession – or worse – will hit bottom soon, evidence comes along that the economic problems we face are worse than we thought, and that 2010 will be a tougher year economically than 2009, if that’s possible.

Under that scenario, we would most certainly find continued weak demand for oil in key bourses across the globe. Any growth all should push the price of oil up closer to $60, but I don’t see how we get over the hump if global demand for crude oil continues to recede.

One possible silver lining? The announcement this week from the Federal Reserve that it will dive back into the bond market and buy $750 billion in mortgage securities and another $300 billion in longer-term government Treasuries. Any potential inflationary move from the Fed – and plowing another $1 trillion into the capital markets certainly qualifies – will send the price of oil upward, and that’s exactly what has happened this week, as oil rose by 1.5% immediately after the fed announcement.

As a consumer and an American, I hate to see the rising specter of inflation gathering over the U.S. economic landscape. But, for the short term, it could give the oil industry some much needed breathing room.