ROME: OPEC members Saudi Arabia and Libya are confident oil prices will keep rising to eventually hit $75 a barrel, but acknowledged it would not be any time soon as a weak world economy keeps a lid on demand.

Libya said oil demand could rise by the third quarter if the US economy recovers, but top oil producer Saudi Arabia fretted about weak demand outside Asia as it urged OPEC to “stay the course” when it meets on May 28.

Libya’s top oil official said the recent rise in prices appeared to be at least partly driven by speculation rather than fundamentals, a warning that came as the United States urged OPEC to avoid volatility that could slow an economic recovery.

“It is not the fundamentals that’s moving the market because there is a lot of overhang in the market,” Libya’s Shokri Ghanem said on the eve of a meeting of the Group of Eight energy ministers. “The return of the speculators seems to me to be a force in the market.”

He said oil prices would ultimately hit $75 per barrel — the level producers say is needed to encourage investment in new production over the long term — but not very soon.

Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi also said oil prices would “eventually” hit $75 per barrel but cited weak demand as a problem.

“The problem is the market. Demand is only in one place, in Asia, that’s all,” Naimi was quoted as saying by Platt’s oil agency.

He urged OPEC to “stay the course” when it meets on May 28. The group is expected to stick to its current production targets, but stress the need for full compliance with them, a senior Gulf source has previously said.

Ghanem said it was too early to say what OPEC would decide at the Vienna meeting but said compliance to quotas by OPEC members was good.

“Compliance is good, there are no complaints, it’s almost 80 percent,” he said.

Some sources have estimated compliance had slipped below 80 percent. OPEC’s latest monthly report pegged it at 77 percent.

Oil rallied to a six-month high of more than $60 a barrel this week, almost double last December’s low and well above the $50 level Saudi Arabia has said it could live with to help nurse the world economy back to growth.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who met Naimi in Rome, said it was in the producer nations’ interest as well to prevent a spike in prices that would dampen oil demand. “I think what the world wants is stable oil prices,” Chu told reporters after signing a deal on clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration technologies with G-8 host Italy.

“Another spike in oil will certainly have very big consequences in terms of the world economy recovery.”

IMF ‘too pessimistic’

Meanwhile Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said yesterday the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was overly pessimistic on its forecast for the price of oil this year.

Speaking to Al-Arabiya television, Assaf dismissed the likelihood of a contraction in Saudi economy saying these predictions were based on the IMF’s oil price forecast.

“There was some exaggerated pessimism,” he said.