King Abdullah, ruler of Saudi Arabia, opened the unusual oil meeting in Jeddah on Sunday by describing rocketing fuel prices as unjustifiable, before laying out ways in which he thought the world could act.

He proposed that the World Bank lead an “energy initiative” for the poor and said his kingdom would allocate $500m (€320m, £253m) from its development fund to help developing countries obtain energy and to finance development. He also called on Opec to set up a parallel $1bn programme to its fund.