OPEC, EU to Hold Twice-Yearly Meetings on Oil Market (Update4)

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — OPEC, producer of more than a third of the world’s oil, and the European Union plan to hold twice- yearly meetings to discuss how to maintain a stable oil price acceptable to producing and consuming countries.

Officials will meet first in May or June, Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Dutch minister of economic affairs said today in Jakarta. An appropriate level for OPEC’s crude oil basket price, last at $41.44, would be $30 to $35 a barrel, he said.
High oil prices continue to pose a risk to economic growth, said Caio Koch-Weser, deputy finance minister of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, on Jan. 27. EU member states used about 19 percent of world oil consumption in 2003.

“I think that both OPEC and the EU have been taken by surprise at the persistence of the high oil prices,” said Anthony Nunan, manager of international petroleum business at Mitsubishi Corp. in Tokyo. “We are in uncharted territory and no- one really knows at what oil price level there will be serious damage to the world’s economy.”

Crude oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange reached a record of $55.67 a barrel on Oct. 25. The March contract traded at $47.58 a barrel, 14 percent below its all-time high, at 7 p.m. Singapore time.

Bloomberg