No plans to cut output of crude oil, OPEC says

A sign on the front of a truck shows truck drivers where to turn before a rally at a truck stop on Saturday in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The truckers rallied in protest of the increasing cost of diesel fuel. PHOTO: AFP

OPEC has no plans to cut crude output after prices fell from a record, said Chakib Khelil, the president of the group that controls more than 40 percent of the world's crude supply.

"We decided to keep the current production and we are not going to cut output," Khelil, who is also the oil minister of Algeria, told reporters in Algiers.

He spoke to them after making an appearance on Algerian TV on Saturday night.

OPEC doesn't meet again until Sept. 9, though the group will hold an informal meeting in Rome on April 20, Khelil said.

Crude oil for May delivery fell 9 percent from a record US$111.80 a barrel on March 17, closing at US$101.84 a barrel on Thursday, the last day of trading before the Easter holiday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The 13-member OPEC decided to keep output quotas unchanged at a meeting on March 5.

The group produced an average of 32.27 million barrels per day last month, Bloomberg estimates indicate.

"There is enough supply in the market," Khelil said.

International demand is expected to decline by 1.2 million barrels a day in the second quarter of the year, Khelil said.

He said he expected prices to remain high "between US$80 and US$110 a barrel."