"They've got to get help from Russia if they really want to contain this. Russia's production is increasing more rapidly than anybody else's and will continue to increase," said John Waterlow, an oil analyst at Wood Mackenzie Consultants in Edinburgh.
Russia agreed reluctantly in December 2001 to cut its production in cooperation with OPEC, but it has played down expectations that it might do so again.
OPEC President Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah told reporters in Tokyo on Friday that Russia had given the group "very strong commitments" to cooperate and that the Russians were "absolutely" not interested in seeing prices fall.
Yet later in the day, Russia's Energy Minister Igor Yusufov told a news conference in Moscow that OPEC's price target was too high.
"We don't want to go over US$25 a barrel because it hurts consumers, while OPEC believes that US$28 a barrel -- even US$30 a barrel -- is acceptable," Yusufov said.
Waterlow, the analyst, said that Russian support for OPEC "is unlikely to be any more than cosmetic, if it happens at all."
At the same time, pressure is growing within OPEC, as Algeria, Libya and Nigeria each press for a larger output quota. Any increase in individual quotas would make it harder for OPEC to trim its aggregate production, the IEA said.
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