The weekly average crude oil price of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) dropped 0.48 U.S. dollars to 54.85 dollars per barrel last week, the cartel's secretariat said on Monday.

Due to the continuous drop in the oil price recently, OPEC planned to hold an extraordinary ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar, on Thursday to discuss whether to cut the current output by 1 million barrels per day or not.

However, the member countries have not reached consensus yet, an OPEC spokesman said here on Monday.

Claude Mandil, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, criticized OPEC's plan to cut the production on Monday.

OPEC's plan to reduce the output, which aimed to control the oil prices over 60 dollars per barrel, was a false signal to the international market because "the current oil prices are still on the high side", he said.

Meanwhile, there is prediction of decreasing demand for crude oil, according to OPEC's monthly report issued last week.

The global daily crude oil demand in 2006 would go down by a significant 100,000 barrels to 84.20 million barrels per day, it said.

The daily demand for OPEC's crude oil from the international market would go down by a significant 200,000 barrels to 28.7 million barrels per day this year and to 28.1 million barrels per day in 2007, it said.

The report said that the average crude oil production of OPEC member countries in September reached 29.7 million barrels per day. Without Iraq's output, OPEC's production was 27.6 million barrels per day, lower than its production quota, 28 million barrels per day.

Crude futures have fallen more than 20 percent from its record 78.40 dollars per barrel in mid-July, as demand was downgraded and supply worries eased.

Source: Xinhua