VIENNA, June 25, (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Oil prices rose as the Middle East conflict remain unsolved and oil ministers began assembling ahead of this week's OPEC’s meeting, in Vienna during the coming days. Analysts expect some resolution restrictions, New Zealand Herald says.

Benchmark Brent crude on London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) closed 54 cents higher at $25.29 a barrel, while U.S. light sweet crude gained 65 centAs to $26.60.

Analysts said they expected in the immediate term any further price gains would be modest.

Although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is expected at its meeting in Vienna on Wednesday to leave existing production ceilings in place, analysts believe the cartel is already pumping more oil than their official quotas.

They argue that OPEC fears losing market share as most of the non-OPEC producers, which supported OPEC's production limits, have removed output restrictions.

Mark Keenan, trader at ABN Amro, commented: "The general consensus is that OPEC will keep the current limits.

"Officially production will remain the same, but probably there will be an awful lot of cheating."

Algerian Energy and Mining Minister, Chakib Khelil, said on Monday he expected the cartel to leave curbs unchanged and that he was concerned about compliance to output quotas within OPEC.

"I think everyone is concerned about that, we're hoping that we will have full compliance and that we can maintain prices at appropriate levels between $22-$28 (a barrel)," Khelil told reporters as he arrived for the meeting.

Monday's price rises began in overnight trading as Israeli tanks rolled into the West Bank city of Ramallah and surrounded the headquarters of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in the latest phase of Israel's expanding crackdown.

Israel is not an oil producer, but the market fears escalation of Middle East conflict could potentially disrupt supplies from crude exporters in the region.

The oil market rally follows deep declines at the end of last week after a Reuters report that OPEC-member Venezuela planned to lift production by 400,000 bpd above its OPEC quota for the rest of the year to solve a crisis in government finances.

Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, denied that there will be such an increase, but analysts said the news had undermined confidence in OPEC and reinforced concern about its general willingness to comply with output restrictions.

In January, OPEC officially slashed production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to boost prices which sank to about $17 a barrel shortly after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

At the same time, cuts by five non-OPEC producers including Russia, Mexico and Norway removed an additional 500,000 bpd from the 76 million-bpd global market.

Of the five countries, only Mexico and Oman are expected to continue their export restraints. The world's second and third largest exporters, Russia and Norway respectively, plan to return exports to full capacity.

Equally, OPEC's discipline has been relaxing.

Leakage by the cartel is estimated to be running at some 1.5 million bpd over official limits of 21.7 million bpd.