OPEC will do all it can to show it wants to stabilize sky-high oil prices when the cartel meets here on Wednesday, but having already maximized production there is little more it can do to calm the markets.
The members of the OPEC "cannot produce more", said Bruce Evers, an analyst with Investec Securities.
Faced with soaring prices, which recently flirted with the US$50 per barrel mark, and demands from consumer countries to do something about the it, the cartel began pumping at full capacity last month.
According to figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the 11 member countries, among them Iraq, produced 29.3 million barrels of oil per day last month.
This is well above their official production ceiling of 26 million barrels a day, which does not include Iraq's production of around 1.8 million barrels a day.
Even if the cartel, which is eager to appease the markets, claims that it can produce up to 31.5 million barrels per day, the experts are not so sure.
Of all the members only Saudi Arabia, which produces some 9.5 million barrels per day, still has spare capacity, at least on paper.
"Theoretically, their capacity is some 10.5 million barrels per day, but we are asking ourselves whether they can really pump out that much and especially whether they can sustain such an output over two or four months," said Nicolas Sarkis, the editor of the French publication Pitrole et Gaz Arabes.
With little room to manoeuvre, OPEC has in recent months lost its stature as a stabilizing influence on the markets, which has punished the slightest concern over capacity with another price increase.
The markets are therefore showing far less interest in Wed-nesday's meeting, from which they do not expect any particular announcement, than they usually do with OPEC gatherings.
"I will not be surprised if the meeting does not produce much at all," said Lee Elliott, of the brokerage firm GNI-Man Prudential.
"They are going to talk about an eventual increase in their quotas and their priceband ... but I do not think that they will increase the quotas," said Adam Sieminski, an analyst from Deutsche Bank.
Sarkis predicted that there was a "risk that soon, from the first quarter, the demand will lessen and that the price will drop sharply."
But if the theoretical question of a change in quota leaves the markets rather cold, they are showing somewhat more interest in a possible change in the cartel's price band.
An upward adjustment in the band will be interpreted by the consumer nations as a sign that OPEC is happy with the high prices and does not intend to act to bring them down.
A source close to the cartel said that a "change of the price band" of US$22 to US$28 "has been put on the agenda of the ministerial conference" as it was now so far out of step with the actual price.
"The ministers will ask experts of our strategic commission, which will meet on October 11 and 12 in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia], to come up with proposals before reaching a decision before year end," according to the source, who asked not be named.
The latest figures mentioned indicate that OPEC is thinking of moving the priceband to US$26 to US$34, thereby setting its recommended price per barrel at US$30.
But many observers say they expect the ministers to hold off on this politically delicate decision until matter the presidential elections in the US in early November.
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