OPEC has decided to cut its official crude oil production by around 4 percent in an effort to buttress prices, but delegates adjourned a Friday meeting without reaching a final agreement on the planned decrease.
OPEC is seeking to keep prices from falling despite a seasonal weakness in demand and an overall decline in global economic growth.
OPEC oil ministers refused to disclose how many barrels of oil they were considering removing from global markets, but several delegates have suggested that OPEC's production cut would equal at least 1 million barrels a day, or 4 percent.
"We will tell you the number in the official communique ... in less than 24 hours," Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi told reporters at OPEC headquarters in the Austrian capital.
OPEC Secretary General Ali Rodriguez said that total output cuts by OPEC members combined with major non-OPEC producers could total 1.5 million barrels a day, a number that Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh suggested was correct.
"We are arriving at a number ... but we need to finalize some details. That is all," Rodriguez told a news conference after Friday's meeting ended.
The session was to resume yesterday, he said.
OPEC members pump almost 40 percent of the world's oil, and what they decide will have a direct impact on retail prices for gasoline and other refined products in importing countries such as the US.
OPEC's current quota is 25.2 million barrels a day. If it trims as much as 1 million barrels from that amount, it might cause prices to ``slingshot'' higher, said Mike Rothman, head of energy research at Merrill Lynch in New York.
Unlike previous OPEC meetings in recent years, this one is unfolding against a backdrop of economic fragility, with stock markets from New York to Tokyo registering steep losses in share values.
Consumer confidence has taken a beating, and fears of a recession are growing.
Such conditions have complicated OPEC's efforts to arrive at a suitable cut in output, ministers said.
"Economic growth in the short term is driven by consumer confidence, and OPEC aims to reinforce this confidence by ensuring stable prices," OPEC president Chakib Khelil said.
Naimi said he was "very happy" with the cartel's discussions so far. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's largest producer, typically takes a more moderate position on oil production than Iran and Vene-zuela, who tend to favor higher prices.
However, the adjournment of the meeting until Saturday attests to the difficulty delegates face in working out the specifics of the volume decrease.
Markets moved higher on the likelihood of a sizable cut. Contracts of light, sweet crude for April delivery were trading Friday at US$27.15 a barrel, up US$0.60, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
May contracts of North Sea Brent crude were US$0.60 higher at US$25.61 in late trading on the International Petroleum Exchange in London.
A decrease of 1 million barrels a day would be "extreme," said Roger Diwan, an analyst at The Petroleum Finance Corp, a consultancy based in Washington.
As summer approaches, OPEC would probably have to reverse itself quickly and pump more oil so that refineries can meet a burgeoning demand for gasoline, he said.
Bottlenecks at refineries contributed to a spike in gasoline prices last summer.
OPEC members agreed in January to lop 1.5 million barrels off their official quota, a decrease that took effect Feb. 1.
The current global economic weakness appears to have reinforced the case within OPEC for deeper cuts in production.
The organization also is anticipating a slowdown this spring in seasonal demand for heating oil and gasoline as the weather starts to warm in many importing nations.
Members still are producing about 500,000 barrels a day above the target they agreed upon in January.
This amount of overproduction means that if cartel members decided to reduce their official output by 1 million barrels a day, the actual decrease could equal only half that amount, analysts said.
Representatives of non-OPEC producers including Mexico, Russia and Angola were also attending the meeting.
Khelil said such countries have "a special responsibility" to cooperate with OPEC so as to prevent a crash in prices such as the one that occured in 1998, when crude fell to as low as US$10 a barrel.
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