ABUJA, 6 October 2006 — OPEC President Edmund Daukoru said yesterday that the group might hold an emergency meeting to consider cutting production.
“We are toying with the possibility of having an emergency meeting,” Daukoru, who is also Nigerian Oil Minister, said, dismissing suggestions that the organization had already reduced its daily output by one million.
Official figures released in August put total OPEC production at just under 30 million barrels per day. “We are still consulting on whether we should have an emergency meeting or not. It is at such a meeting that we will come up with an appropriate action,” Daukoru said. In Algiers, the Algerian press agency APS quoted an “informed source” as saying an emergency meeting would take place on Oct. 18 and 19 in Vienna, but an OPEC spokesman promptly denied the report. “There is no such decision,” OPEC spokesman Omar Farouk Ibrahim said.
In London, the price of oil jumped above $60 a barrel. The main New York contract for November delivery rose by 75.0 cents to $60.45 a barrel. Earlier the Financial Times newspaper reported that OPEC had already agreed informally to cut its output by one million barrels per day or 4.0 percent to prop up the price which has fallen by 25 percent from record high levels in July. The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said here that although there appeared to be a consensus among members for a production cut to support the market, only a meeting can ratify that. “From all the different statements, you will notice that we have a shared concern. We each have an idea of what is an appropriate response. But we will arrive at an agreed position on what to do only after we meet,” Daukoru said.
“We know that something needs to be done. How much, how soon and how to distribute it among member-countries will be an issue if we do meet,” he added.
“As it is now, whatever people hear is simply individual views of OPEC member countries,” he said. The Saudi ambassador to the United States said Wednesday that he did not expect OPEC to hold an emergency meeting to discuss prices ahead of its scheduled Dec. 14 meeting.
