VIENNA, 21 September 2005 — OPEC yesterday offered up every last barrel of its spare production in a bid to reassure consumer countries about energy supply security. The deal means the 11-member Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is putting its last two million barrels a day of crude on the block for world oil markets.
The offer comes after European Union finance ministers, represented by Britain’s Gordon Brown, said OPEC should do more to prevent high fuel costs from slowing global economic growth.
“We’re offering everything in our pocket and this is my message to Gordon Brown — if he would like to have it I would be happy to sell it to him,” said OPEC President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahd Al-Sabah.
The offer applies from Oct. 1 for 3 months.
Sheikh Ahmad’s comments betray the irritation in OPEC’s ranks about being blamed for high oil prices when it feels producers have been selling as much crude as refiners can absorb.
“We will really know from this where the constraint is and that’s in the downstream, so nobody can blame OPEC. That’s really the purpose of this,” Nigerian Oil Minister Edmund Daukoru said.
Although official OPEC quota limits were left unchanged at 28 million bpd, the pact effectively suspends quotas until the end of the year.
“The whole idea is to give the individual member countries the flexibility to respond to their customers as fast as they can and also assure the customer that the supply is there,” said Saudi Minister for Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi.
Experts agree with OPEC’s analysis that world markets are not short of crude. US light crude eased $1.89 to $65.50 a barrel after vaulting more than $4 on Monday as a new storm threatened further damage to US Gulf oil facilities after Hurricane Katrina.
