``Ministers from OPEC will meet to continue ongoing consultations on the state of the oil market and any actions OPEC should take to restore prices,'' Mohammed Barkindo said in a phone interview from Saudi Arabia today.
Barkindo denied an Associated Press report that the meeting planned for Oct. 19 in Doha, Qatar, had been canceled. OPEC still hasn't decided whether to make a proposed 1 million-barrel-a-day cut in output from the group's actual production or its quota.
In Doha, Qatar, the proposed host venue for the emergency meeting, Oil Minister Abdulla bin Hamad al- Attiyah confirmed the OPEC ministers will gather in Doha on Thursday, his office said in a statement on the state- run Qatar News Agency.
The OPEC ministers will discuss one item on their agenda, which is a proposal to cut 1 million barrels a day from the group's actual production, al-Attiyah said, according to other statement he gave to Kuwait News Agency, or KUNA.
``There won't be any surprises in the meeting as all OPEC ministers will agree to the production cut", al- Attiyah said according to KUNA.
OPEC countries are attempting to take a pre-emptive measure on the output to prevent a price crash like the once that occurred in 1985 and 1997, KUNA reported him as saying today.
Crude oil for November delivery rose 71 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $58.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Oct. 13. On Oct. 12, futures reached $57.22, the lowest since Dec. 19. The contract slipped 2 percent last week.
``At this point I think the market is skeptical aboutOPEC,'' Peter Heintzelman, head of energy at Standard Bank Plc in Dubai, U.A.E., said in a phone interview today. ``It's whether they can comply with any cuts that matters.''
OPEC's 11 members are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Nigeria, Libya, Indonesia, Algeria and Qatar. More than half of the group's output is shipped from the Persian Gulf.
The group's 10 members with quotas pumped 27.6 million barrels a day last month, according to Bloomberg data. OPEC's official production ceiling, which excludes Iraq's output, is 28 million barrels a day of crude.
Decisions Ahead
Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said in a state-television interview on Oct. 13 that OPEC's ministers have agreed to cut output by 1 million barrels a day but are undecided whether this should come from actual output or its production ceiling, which limits how much crude each nation can pump.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer, has declined to comment officially on whether it supports a cut by the group. State-run Saudi Aramco informed customers in Asia and the Mediterranean region in writing last week that it will meet its full crude delivery commitments next month, according to traders and refinery officials.
OPEC ministers are concerned about falling prices and rising crude oil inventories in the U.S., Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, Qatar's oil minister said in a phone interview on Oct. 11. The International Energy Agency, an adviser to 26 nations, cut its estimates on Oct. 11 for global oil demand this year and next partly due to slowing economic growth in the U.S.
World oil demand will be 84.57 million barrels a day this year, 110,000 barrels a day fewer than estimated last month, the Paris-based agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report. The 2007 consumption estimate was lowered by 200,000 barrels a day to 86.02 million, the e- mailed document said.
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