VIENNA, 24 September 2003 — OPEC Secretary General Alvaro Silva Calderon said yesterday that OPEC could hold to its current production levels for the time being.
Asked by reporters if OPEC quotas needed to change, Silva Calderon said: “I would say not for the time being.” He was arriving in Vienna for a meeting today of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The OPEC meeting comes at a time of relative calm in the world oil market. OPEC should be able to hold oil production steady for the rest of the year, Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said here Monday. “We think that the market is in balance,” Ramirez said.
OPEC, which produces about one third of the world’s oil, still faces calls from consumer countries for an increase in oil production from the current ceiling of 25.4 million barrels per day (bpd) to help rebuild low stocks.
Iraq’s new Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Al-Uloum arrived for his country’s first post-war OPEC meeting under US occupation without immediate comment.
Meanwhile, the price of Brent North Sea crude oil for November delivery rose 42 cents a barrel to $25.95 in London trade.
New York’s reference light sweet crude October contract was 39 cents higher at $27.58 per barrel in morning deals.
Apart from today’s OPEC meeting, funds and other market players will be keeping a close eye on the next set of US government data on the country’s oil inventories, scheduled for release today.
Last week’s data showed builds across the barrel following record levels of imports, but officials from the West’s energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, warned that stocks remain lower than average.
“Stocks are still very tight, especially in the US on the crude side. In the short term, there is still a concern about inventories,” Antoine Halff, principal administrator for oil demand analysis at the IEA, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Singapore.