The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is to hold an extraordinary ministerial meeting on Dec. 17 to study world oil market outlook, said its current president Chakib Khelil.
The meeting, which comes in the wake of the cartel's extraordinary meeting in Vienna on Oct. 24, will be held in the western Algerian town of Oran and to study the market outlook for the first half of 2009, said Khelil, who is also Algeria's energy minister.
He does not rule out another output cut if crude oil price remains below 70 U.S. dollars per barrel, saying that the cartel's objective is to have the oil prices range between 70 and 90 dollars a barrel.
If all OPEC members seriously follow the output cut decision, and the price still does not reach the anticipated level, there will probably be another production cutback, said Khelil.
Ahead of the Oran meeting, the Arab member states of OPEC, which include Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iraq besides Algeria, will meet in Cairo on Nov. 29, Khelil added.
At the Oct. 24 meeting in Vienna, OPEC ministers agreed to reduce output by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) to 27.3 million bpd from Nov. 1 to stem the falling of oil prices.
However, the decision does not seem to work, as declining demand caused by global financial crisis has kept oil prices low.
The weekly average oil prices dropped to 57.68 dollars per barrel last week, the Vienna-based cartel, which produces 40 percent of the world's oil, said on Nov.3.
It is the first time that weekly prices have dipped below 60 dollars since the end of March 2007.
Source: Xinhua
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