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Saudi oil minister suggests OPEC unlikely to make changes if market stable |
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May 10, 2000
LOS ANGELES, MAY 9 (AP) - Saudi Arabia's oil minister said Monday he is content with the current level of oil prices and suggested OPEC is not likely to make changes if the market remains stable when its leaders meet next month.
Ali I. Al-Naimi joined a chorus of leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries who recently have expressed satisfaction with current market conditions.
"The price is in an excellent range. The market is stable. I would like to keep it that way if we can," Al-Naimi said during a news conference.
Oil prices, which surged as high as dlrs 34 a barrel in late March, have been trading around in the mid-dlrs 20 range since OPEC members in April announced they would restore 1 million barrels to 27.7 million barrels a day.
OPEC ministers boosted production at the behest of the United States and other countries who argued that high prices were slowing world economic growth.
A final decision on future price and production targets, Al-Naimi said, will depend on a review of May market data by OPEC heads of state during their June 21 meeting.
"If the market stays the way it is, is as stable as it is, we may do nothing in June," he said.
June intermediate crude rose 80 cents to dlrs 28.09 in trading Monday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a six-week high, responding to a heat wave sweeping through the Northeast.
Earlier on Monday, OPEC President Ali Rodriguez, who is also Venezuela's oil minister, and acting OPEC Secretary General Shokri Ghanem of Lybia said they expected OPEC's target price range of dlrs 22 to dlrs 28 per barrel to remain in place through the end of 2000.
They spoke at a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela. The oil ministers of Qatar and Algeria also have said recently they see no reason for change.
OPEC has said it will try to stay within the target price range by adjusting output up or down as necessary.
OPEC curtailed production in March 1999 in a campaign to boost prices from record lows that caused severe economic problems in oil producing countries, but were a boon to consumers in the United States and Europe. So far, OPEC members have kept to their production quotas in an unusual show of discipline.
Al-Naimi attributed the greater discipline to close involvement by heads of state of the member nations, and to recognition that exporters will benefit more in the long run from a stable market.
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