According a report by Bloomberg, ministers from OPEC’s 12 member countries agreed to stand by the output quota as expected at their meeting today in Vienna.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has reaffirmed the quotas at every meeting since they were set in December 2008, even though the group is exceeding that limit by the equivalent of a supertanker of crude a day. OPEC, supplying about 40 percent of the world’s oil, set its official cap at 24.845 million barrels a day.
OPEC members excluding Iraq pumped 26.8 million barrels a day last month, 1.9 million more than the target, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Oil prices surged 78 percent last year as OPEC curtailed as much as 3.7 million barrels a day of output and the global economy started to emerge from its worst slump since World War II. Crude futures traded as high as $82.56 a barrel today on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 3.7 percent this year.
Iran's petroleum minister Masoud Mirkazemi had said before attending the ministerial meeting that changing the group's output is not needed.
Before the ministerial meeting today, the Ministerial Monitoring Sub-Committee (MMC) had a meeting in which the oil market situation, compliance to quotas, supply and demand balance were reviewed.
Also Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters before the start of today’s meeting that "current prices are “beautiful,”. At OPEC’s last meeting in December 2009, he said prices between $70 and $80 a barrel is “perfect.”
Angolan Oil Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos said yesterday that prices between $80 and $90 a barrel are good and $90 would be too high.
One minister, Algeria’s Chakib Khelil, said the group may have to raise production quotas later this year because of rising prices. There is a “50-50 chance” that output limits will be raised at a subsequent meeting in September, he told reporters yesterday.
“The world is going to need additional OPEC crude output,” said Wittner of Societe Generale. “We expect continued draw downs in inventories and rising prices assuming the global economic recovery continues.”
For now, OPEC said its own analysis shows it is pumping more oil than is needed. OPEC estimated in a March 10 report that its current production is 1.5 million barrels a day more than the demand for its crude in the second quarter, after analyzing non-member production and global consumption. In February, members complied with 53 percent of the record 4.2 million barrels a day cuts announced in 2008, OPEC data shows.
OPEC’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Iraq is exempt from production quotas.