VIENNA, 12 March 2003 — OPEC has decided to leave its oil production quotas unchanged, Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil said yesterday after an informal meeting with fellow oil ministers from the 11-country organization.

Khelil was speaking ahead of a plenary session of the oil producers’ group to decide on its response to mounting international concern over the effect of a possible war in Iraq on oil prices.

There would be “no change” in output quotas, Khelil said.

OPEC President Abdullah ibn Hamad Al-Attiyah of Qatar said emergency plans to boost oil output during a war in Iraq had not even been discussed.

“We don’t believe in emergency plans,” he said. “We’ve never talked about it.”

Saudi Arabia, the main OPEC producer, had also said there is no reason to increase production while stressing that should supply strains arise, the organization would provide enough oil to meet demand.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said his country had production capacity to spare and promised the world market would not run short of oil. But Naimi said he saw no reason to suspend OPEC output limits.

In an apparent reference to suggestions that OPEC set aside quotas should war start, he said OPEC without quotas would be “chaos.” “We will make sure there is enough oil in the market,” he told reporters. “There will be no shortage of oil.”

The Saudi minister declined to say how much his country now was pumping of its 10.5 million bpd capacity but said: “We have plenty of spare capacity.” Saudi Arabia is the only producer in OPEC with any appreciable volume of spare capacity with all others producing at, or near, capacity.

Naimi said he believed the United States and the International Energy Agency, the group that control’s the West’s strategic stockpiles, were happy to let OPEC compensate for any shortages during war.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh commented that OPEC would not take a decision which could be interpreted by Muslims and Arabs as support for a US attack on Iraq. Shortly after the comments by the Algerian minister Khelil, US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Washington would tap its oil reserves if a “severe supply disruption” were to occur.

“We’re prepared to act very quickly,” Abraham said. “Our decision...will be based on an estimation of whether or not we believe a severe supply disruption exists.”

Abraham was in Vienna to attend a two-day conference on tackling the threat of nuclear “dirty bombs” as a weapon of terrorism, organized by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.

But he refused to be drawn on whether the United States would make such a decision in case of a potential war on Iraq, saying: “Our decision is unrelated to any specific action, or trigger.”

Before yesterday’s ministerial meeting, oil prices eased as OPEC sent reassuring signals about the world oil supply situation amid mounting international tension over Iraq.

OPEC President Al-Attiyah said: “If there will be a shortage in the market, then we will come to discuss how to balance and for how long, and see what is the quantity of the shortage”.