04 November 2003 16:24
Oil prices "not high" and "fair": OPEC chief
Current oil prices in the range of 22 to 28 dollars a barrel are "not very high, ... (and) are fair,"
secretary general of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Alvaro Silva-Calderon told
reporters.
"The current oil prices are not very high," Silva-Calderon said Tuesday in an indirect rebuff to Russian
Energy Minister Igor Yusufov who on Monday described world oil prices as "unfairly high."
Russia, which is not a member of OPEC, may ask the cartel to increase its production quotas, if possible to see oil
prices drop from their current level of between 28 and 29 dollars a barrel to between 24 and 25 dollars, Yusufov
said.
Yusufov was due to leave Moscow for Rome to attend a European Union-Russia summit with President Vladimir Putin and
had no meeting with the OPEC chief scheduled.
Silva-Calderon stressed that there is currently "enough oil on the market," although "a series of
factors could affect the price of oil that are not within OPEC's control," the RIA Novosti news agency
reported.
Events in Venezuela or Nigeria could influence oil markets, he noted.
Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia, is the largest crude producer outside OPEC
and has been resisting pressure for months to cut output.
With oil prices currently hovering between 28 and 29 dollars a barrel, OPEC is not ruling out fresh quota cuts at its
next meeting in December after having trimmed its production in September by 900,000 barrels per day from November
1.
OPEC is seeking to contain Russian production in order to keep prices as high as possible, fearing that the supply of
crude may outstrip demand in the coming months.
But Russia is engaged in developing its oil production, with output up by 11 percent for January-September 2003
compared with the same period last year.
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