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OPEC's pumping excess crude to cut price: Purnomo

OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the group's 10 members that have quotas are pumping excess crude oil to bring down prices.

Output by members of the group with quotas, which excludes Iraq, rose 10,000 barrels a day to 26.07 million barrels last month, a Bloomberg survey showed on April 5. That was 1.57 million barrels, or 6.4 percent, above the producers' quota of 24.5 million.

OPEC, which pumps a third of world oil supply, earlier agreed to cut output starting this month by another 4 percent to 23.5 million barrels a day.

"OPEC members are still producing above quota because we want to bring down the oil price to between US$22 and US$28 a barrel,'' Purnomo said in Subang, a town in Indonesia's West Java province.

He is also the energy and mineral resources minister for Indonesia.

Purnomo referred to the OPEC target price of US$22 to US$28 a barrel average for a basket comprising seven crude oils.

The OPEC benchmark has been above that range since Dec. 2 and last rose US$0.44 to US$32.54 a barrel on Thursday.

Purnomo has been invited to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the oil market by June. Russia is a rival oil producer, which competes with OPEC members for market share.

By the end of this month, Purnomo will also go to Paris to meet representatives from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency. Both are UN-related economic groups that advise industrialized countries, which are mainly oil consumers.

"We are going to host a dialogue on the oil price," Purnomo said.

Oil prices in New York last Friday rose US$0.17, or 0.5 percent, to US$37.74 a barrel, ending higher for a second straight week.

Prices were about 29 percent higher than a year earlier as US refineries increase output to meet gasoline demand, which is expected to rise during the summer.
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