Brent oil price near $80 mark, OPEC oil shipments down

Brent oil prices are trading higher near the $80 mark in Asia on Friday as the latest US data pleases the market and a report that OPEC member countries will cut oil shipments later in March.

Brent crude oil futures for April delivery rose as much as 64 cents to $79.18 a barrel on the London based ICE Futures Exchange.

A report that OPEC member countries will cut shipments by 2.3 percent in the month ending March 20th 2010. OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s crude, will ship 22.87 million barrels a day in the four week period, compared with 23.42 million a month earlier, the Halifax, England-based tanker-tracker Oil Movements said yesterday in a report. The data excludes Ecuador and Angola.

OPEC Secretary General Abdalla el-Badri said on February 2nd that ministers will be unlikely to alter their existing quota of 24.845 million barrels a day unless market conditions change. Compliance with this target is around 55 percent, according to Oil Movements. OPEC next meet on March 17th 2010.

OPEC won’t need to increase its output in the first half of the year because demand won’t be improving significantly, OPEC’s Iran governor said Thursday. Asked if he expects any quota change when OPEC meets on March 17th in Vienna, Muhammad Ali Khatibi said “in the first half of 2010, there is no significant increase on the demand side.”

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