| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, November 15, 2001 |
OPEC Agrees to Cut Daily Production by 1.5 Mln Barrels |
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OPEC has agreed to reduce its daily production target for oil by 1.5 million barrels, or 6 percent, but only if non-OPEC producers share the burden by making a deep cut of their own, several oil ministers said Wednesday.
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OPEC has agreed to reduce its daily production target for oil by 1.5 million barrels, or 6 percent, but only if non-OPEC producers share the burden by making a deep cut of their own, several oil ministers said Wednesday.
Delegates of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said they were asking oil producing countries outside the cartel to decrease output by 500,000 barrels, for a combined cut of 2 million barrels a day aimed at halting the recent slide in oil prices. The cuts are to take effect on Jan. 1.
Confronted with a sharp drop in global demand for crude, OPEC members are eager to tighten their taps and have called on major non-OPEC producers such as Mexico and Norway to do the same. Despite pleas and veiled threats of a price war, however, Russia is the only major non-OPEC producer so far to publicly declare its willingness to oblige.
OPEC president Chakib Khelil insisted that the group would not follow through with its planned cuts unless non-OPEC producers shouldered some of the responsibility. He noted that OPEC has already curtailed its output by 3.5 million barrels a day this year without a meaningful contribution from other producers.
So far, the group has garnered pledges of non-OPEC cuts totaling about 175,000 barrels a day, said Libyan oil minister Abdulhafid Mahmoud Zlitni. Russia, the world's second-largest oil producer, has offered to make a token cut of 30,000 barrels a day. Zlitni refused to name the other countries that have committed to cut output.
OPEC, which pumps about a third of the world's oil, is alarmed by the collapse in demand for crude and the economic uncertainty lingering from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Oil prices have tumbled by 25 percent since Sept. 11.
OPEC continues to try to peg the price for its benchmark blend of seven crudes within a range of $22-28 per barrel. The price of the OPEC benchmark was 12 cents higher at $19.23 a barrel on Tuesday, the most recent day for which the data was compiled.
President Bush gave a modest boost to prices Tuesday when he ordered the U.S. government to put more oil into America's emergency stockpile and for the first time fill the reserve to full capacity.
The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which currently has 544 million barrels of oil, is to be filled "in a deliberate and cost-effective manner" up to its full capacity of 700 million barrels, Bush said in a statement. The first deliveries were to begin in April.
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