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by Farouk Choukri
BAGHDAD, July 14 (AFP) - OPEC president Ali Rodriguez on Friday ruled out an emergency meeting next week on oil output levels and said any decision to raise production because of high prices would be left until late July or early August. The announcement had an immediate impact on prices, with crude prices climbing back over the 30-dollars-a-barrel mark in nervous London trading. "We have no emergency meeting," Rodriguez said upon arrival in Baghdad in a tour of OPEC members that included Saudi Arabia, the world's leading exporter. "We are not increasing production at this moment because we have a (price band) mechanism and, at the end of July or at the beginning of August, we can make a decision about this," he told reporters. "At the moment we have to wait and see the development of the market," said Rodriguez, who is also Venezuela's energy minister, ahead of talks with his Iraqi counterpart, Amer Rashid. Saudi Arabia reportedly called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna next week to consider pumping more crude oil. However, an OPEC official in Vienna said the 11-member body was divided on whether to hold talks. In London, the price of benchmark Brent crude for August delivery edged briefly up to $30.05 a barrel after the statement from Rodriguez, before slipping back to $29.97 a barrel -- 29 cents lower than Thursday's close. Lawrence Eagles, an analyst at GNI Research, said that in the short term, he expected prices to remain firm unless there is significant news, but he said the market still expects that there will be more oil. The question is when. For the first time in weeks, oil prices fell significantly in early July following a promise by Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi of an output increase of 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) "very soon" to stabilize the market. But after an initial fall, prices rose again as other OPEC members objected to Saudi Arabia's "unilateral" move. At the end of June, OPEC agreed to increase output by 708,000 barrels a day from July 1 and said a reasonable price would be an average of around $25 a barrel. Under a price band mechanism approved informally in March, OPEC output would be increased -- independently of any meeting -- by 500,000 barrels a day if prices remained over an average of $28 a barrel for 20 working days. Some OPEC members have suggested the mechanism could be implemented July 28, provided prices remain high. Iraq's oil minister, meanwhile, said his country was on the road to recovery from a sharp fall in oil exports last month and would soon be back to its normal export level of 2.5 million barrels per day. Delayed agreements, weather problems and fluctuations in the oil market had all contributed to a decline of 500,000 barrels a day in Iraqi exports during June, Rashid said. "In the first half of July, it even decreased much further, something like one million barrels less," the minister said. "But we have recovered since a few days, so we will go back to the normal exports which is about 2.5 million barrels per day," Rashid said. Iraq, which is opposed to OPEC output hikes, has been under sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait but is authorized to export crude under a UN humanitarian program to finance imports of essential goods. Although an OPEC member, it is exempted from the cartel's production quota system because of the embargo. Rodriguez also met in Baghdad with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz to prepare for a visit to Iraq next month by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the state news agency INA said. |
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