AGL 40.00 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
AIRLINK 127.06 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.02%)
BOP 6.64 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.45%)
CNERGY 4.54 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.67%)
DCL 8.58 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.35%)
DFML 41.70 Increased By ▲ 0.26 (0.63%)
DGKC 87.40 Increased By ▲ 0.55 (0.63%)
FCCL 32.59 Increased By ▲ 0.31 (0.96%)
FFBL 64.87 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.11%)
FFL 10.24 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.1%)
HUBC 109.23 Decreased By ▼ -0.34 (-0.31%)
HUMNL 14.65 Decreased By ▼ -0.03 (-0.2%)
KEL 5.11 Increased By ▲ 0.06 (1.19%)
KOSM 7.56 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (1.34%)
MLCF 41.65 Increased By ▲ 0.27 (0.65%)
NBP 59.61 Decreased By ▼ -0.80 (-1.32%)
OGDC 193.00 Increased By ▲ 2.90 (1.53%)
PAEL 28.17 Increased By ▲ 0.34 (1.22%)
PIBTL 7.83 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
PPL 151.20 Increased By ▲ 1.14 (0.76%)
PRL 27.26 Increased By ▲ 0.38 (1.41%)
PTC 16.01 Decreased By ▼ -0.06 (-0.37%)
SEARL 86.02 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (0.02%)
TELE 7.75 Increased By ▲ 0.04 (0.52%)
TOMCL 35.55 Increased By ▲ 0.14 (0.4%)
TPLP 8.20 Increased By ▲ 0.08 (0.99%)
TREET 16.48 Increased By ▲ 0.07 (0.43%)
TRG 53.39 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (0.19%)
UNITY 26.25 Increased By ▲ 0.09 (0.34%)
WTL 1.28 Increased By ▲ 0.02 (1.59%)
BR100 9,998 Increased By 114.2 (1.15%)
BR30 31,214 Increased By 613.5 (2%)
KSE100 94,201 Increased By 845.9 (0.91%)
KSE30 29,194 Increased By 263.1 (0.91%)

With US demand for oil lacklustre, even traditional Opec price hawks like Iran and Venezuela are happy with present prices near $80 a barrel as they head into Tuesday's meeting of the 12-nation organisation. These two countries traditionally are the greatest advocates of tight Opec supply.
But ahead of their meeting there is informal unanimity among Opec oil ministers that with the world's economic recovery feeble at best and crude prices at preferred levels it's best not to rock the boat. That means the ministers will likely agree to maintain Opec's formal production target, now at 26 million barrels a day a benchmark set over one year ago.
Opec has left its members' production quotas unchanged since December 2008, when it announced the last of a series of cuts aimed at bringing their output down by 4.2 million barrels per day. The cuts helped engineer a rebound in crude prices, which had collapsed to the low $30s from a mid-2008 high of almost $150 per barrel.
Since the oil ministers last met three months ago, prices mostly have hovered between $70 and $80 a barrel a range that most Opec nations have factored into their national budgets this year. That has kept even hard-liners Iran and Venezuela on board with other Opec members.
"Opec should not take any decision to change production," Iranian oil minister Masoud Mirkazemi told reporters in Tehran on Monday, echoing comments voiced by Rafael Ramirez, his Venezuean counterpart. Still, there will be behind-the-scenes pressure on some members to produce less by honouring their allotted targets.
At close to 27 million barrels a day, Opec now is producing a daily 600,000 barrels above its official target a result of cheating by individual nations on their quotas. While Opec does not reveal which nations are overproducing, the Paris-based International Energy Agency put overall quota compliance within Opec at only 58 percent in January. World oil demand is expected to rise this year due to surging economic activity in Asian countries, especially China.
The IEA, which advises oil-consuming countries, predicts that the world's appetite for crude will average 86.6 million barrels a day this year, or 1.6 million barrels a day more than 2009's 86.5 million barrels. Still, oil markets remain concerned about shaky demand in the US Crude consumption there and in other top industrialised nations is expected to contract in 2010 for the fifth consecutive year.

Copyright Associated Press, 2010

Comments

Comments are closed.