OPEC's Ministerial Monitoring Sub-Committee recommended Saturday that the 11-member cartel keep its production ceiling at 27 million barrels per day (bpd), while pressing member states to eliminate roughly 500,000 bpd of output that exceeds their assigned quotas.
The recommendation sets the stage for a full OPEC meeting Sunday in Vienna. The group supplies more than a third of global crude oil and has kept a production cut in place since the start of January, following a decision reached in December.
Ministers are weighing competing pressures: spring demand in the northern hemisphere is expected to soften, yet reducing output during winter could push prices even higher and irritate major consumers such as the United States and Europe.
Kuwaiti Oil Minister Ahmad Fahad al-Sabah, who chairs OPEC, said the group would address chronic overproduction, adding that an emergency ministerial meeting before the scheduled March gathering in Iran remains possible. "If necessary, we will do it," he told reporters.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in January 2005, in its own words.