OPEC committee recommends keeping quotas unchanged

OPEC should maintain existing output quotas and improve compliance when the 12-member group meets today, the group’s production-monitoring committee recommended.

“We need more compliance” with existing production targets, Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed al-Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters in Vienna. “I don’t foresee any cut,” he said, when asked at what price level the group might consider a further supply reduction.

Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who represents OPEC’s biggest and most influential producer, said current oil prices are “good for everybody, consumers, producers,” adding to comments from other members of the group pointing to no change in output. All 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News forecast OPEC will leave production quotas unchanged for a third time at today’s meeting.

Oil rallied from a low of $32.70 in January to peak this year at $75 a barrel on Aug. 25. Crude for October delivery was trading at $71.07 on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 10:49 a.m. in Singapore. Al-Sabah said current prices are “OK” and said a supply cutback is unlikely in the near future even though the market is “oversupplied.”

OPEC’s Ministerial Monitoring Committee met for an hour yesterday evening at the group’s Vienna headquarters to review data on OPEC oil supply and demand. The MMC, comprising officials from Iran, Nigeria and Kuwait, often recommends a course of action for the full meeting of OPEC ministers, which convenes at 9:30 p.m. local time, after dark because the summit falls in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.