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| Upbeat OPEC set to hold output steady |
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Thursday, September 10, 2009
VIENNA: Steady crude prices and an upbeat view of the oil market reassured ministers from the OPEC producers’ cartel as they prepared to meet on Wednesday, expected to hold output steady despite a mixed economic outlook.
An OPEC production-monitoring committee said it would formally recommend no change to output at Wednesday’s meeting, which was to start late in the evening due to the Muslim fast of Ramadan.
The three countries represented on the committee, Kuwait, Iran and Nigeria, urged increased compliance with agreed cuts instead, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters late on Tuesday.
The United Arab Emirates energy minister Mohamed Al Hamli echoed the broad view of other OPEC ministers that the oil market was in good health and a further cut in output unlikely.
“We are comfortable with the market” at the moment, he told reporters as he arrived in Vienna on Wednesday. He added that “compliance could be better” with cuts that were agreed last year in order to prop up prices, he said.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, whose country is the biggest OPEC oil producer and its most influential member, said, “The market is in very good shape, very well supplied,” as he arrived ahead of the meeting.
“The price is good for everybody, consumer (and) producer,” he said. A vicious global economic downturn has sapped demand for energy, dragging crude prices from record highs of above $147 in July 2008 to $32.40 in December. They have since recovered to hover around $70.
Now ministers from OPEC countries, which are highly dependent on oil exports, must steer a careful course, supporting prices but not alarming markets by trying to do so too aggressively.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
