Libya Oil Min: Crude Prices Are Out Of OPEC Hands

ISFAHAN, Iran -(Dow Jones)- Libya’s Oil Minister Fathi bin Shatwan said Monday that OPEC was no longer in control of the oil market and he wouldn’t support a proposal by Saudi Arabia to lift the group’s output ceiling by almost 2%
Any OPEC Output Hike Now ‘Purely Cosmetic’ -Nigeria

ISFAHAN, Iran -(Dow Jones)- OPEC is unlikely to manage more than a ‘cosmetic’ increase in oil output this meeting, even as oil prices test the level that the world economy can bear, Nigerian Presidential Adviser on Petroleum and Energy Edmund Dakouru said Monday.

Saudi Arabia has called on the group to increase its formal output limits by 500,000 barrels a day, or 1.9%. But the group is already exceeding its quotas by more than that amount, and few members have the capacity to raise output much higher, Dakouru said.

“I’m dubious whether it would cool prices,” Dakouru said of the Saudi proposal. “We’re not talking additional oil…It would be purely cosmetic.”

Dakouru would like prices to come down, but said strong demand is undermining the group’s efforts.

In a departure from OPEC’s January meeting in Vienna, when minister after minister expressed little concern about oil prices near $50 a barrel, Dakouru said Monday that prices hovering near $55 are pressing the world economy’s limits.

“It’s an issue whether the economy can take $55 oil,” he said. “I think we’re at the limit of what the global economy can just about handle.”

-By Sally Jones, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-207-842 9347; sally.jones@ dowjones.com

Dow Jones Newswires
03-14-051259ET

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