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OPEC Agrees to Increase Oil Output

September 11, 2007 OPEC Agrees to Increase Oil Output By JAD MOUAWAD VIENNA, Sept. 11 — OPEC sought to stamp its authority back on volatile oil markets today by agreeing to increase production by 500,000 barrels a day to meet an expected surge in winter consumption and push prices down. At the same time, OPEC’s top representatives said they feared that a slowing world economy might dampen future demand. The oil cartel signaled that it would be ready to act “swiftly” to protect the interests of its members. Oil markets seemed to shrug off OPEC’s decision as not significant enough. Crude oil futures for October delivery closed today at $78.23 a barrel in New York, up 74 cents, exceeding the previous record close by 2 cents. The decision by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries came after an unusually long day of arguments about the size and the timing of the increase in production. While modest in size, the announcement still came as a surprise to many. Some OPEC countries, including Iran, Venezuela and Algeria, had initially voiced strong opposition to an increase in supplies. Others feared that a mistimed decision to add supplies might backfire at a time of heightened concerns about the economy. But Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states brokered a deal during a seven-hour meeting here. Analysts believe that Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s de facto leader and the group’s biggest supplier, did not wish too see oil prices rise above $80 a barrel. The move to augment OPEC supplies by about 2 percent is the group’s first official increase in over a year. It will be effective Nov. 1. Consuming nations, including the United States, have been urging OPEC producers to put more oil on the market, warning that the winter months would see a big jump in consumption that non-OPEC producers would not be able to meet. They also warned that high oil prices could put an additional drag on the global economy. OPEC was eager to stress that it was being responsible and responsive. “Our message to consumers is that we care and we are concerned and that is why we increased production,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri, OPEC’s secretary general, said at a brief news conference after the meeting. Vera de Ladoucette, an energy expert with Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said: “The Saudis convinced other OPEC countries that $80 a barrel was a ceiling. They were really worried about contributing to the world economic crisis. They acted prudently.” OPEC representatives said they were aware that excessively high prices might put a dent on a global economy that is already suffering from a weak housing market in the United States. Some oil ministers attending the meeting said they didn’t want to be blamed for worsening the world’s economic woes. “We think that the market is a little bit high,” said Kuwait’s acting oil minister, Mohammad Al-Olaim. Yet OPEC also recognized the dangers that a slowing global economy posed to its business. Many ministers here feared repeating the mistake made in 1997 when the group increased supplies by 2.5 million barrels a day just as the Asian financial crisis was brewing. The result was a collapse in oil prices the following year to $10 a barrel. The 1998 rout was deeply traumatic for oil producers, which saw their revenues slashed in half. This time, OPEC hinted that its members would keep a close eye on the market and would be ready to act quickly if needed by cutting oil production if prices declined too much. “OPEC is uncomfortable with a situation that takes control away from the fundamentals, and therefore from OPEC,” said David Kirsch, an oil analyst at PFC Energy, a consulting firm. “The question they are wrestling with is that there are very short-term bullish pressures on prices but longer-term question marks.” OPEC, in a carefully crafted final statement, said that its members would be ready “to swiftly respond to any developments which might jeopardize oil market stability and their interests.” Analysts present in Vienna interpreted that to mean that OPEC would cut production if prices were to decline too rapidly. OPEC ministers are scheduled to meet twice before the end of the year, once in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, for a meeting of OPEC’s heads of state in November, and again in December in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Because of high demand, OPEC members had already been pumping more oil than their previous quotas allowed. The 10 countries that have been allocated a production quota, all except for Angola and Iraq, pumped an average 26.7 million barrels of crude a day last month, according an estimate by Bloomberg, or some 900,000 barrels a day more than their collective target. The new production level raises the target to 27.2 million barrels a day. “For OPEC, the risk of doing nothing and seeing prices escalate seemed bigger than the risk of doing something and watching prices come off from it,” said Jan Stuart, an energy economist at UBS in New York.

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