OPEC is "comfortable" with the price of oil in the lower range of $22-$25, Kuwaiti oil minister Adil Khalid Al-Sabih said Monday, September 24, in Vienna. Arriving for a meeting Wednesday of the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), he also reiterated that the Arab-dominated grouping was committed to "stable" crude markets.
In London Monday the price of benchmark Brent crude plunged by more than three dollars a barrel to a 17-month nadir amid concerns the economic fallout from the September 11 US terrorist attacks could hit demand for crude. November dated-Brent North Sea crude tumbled to $22.3 a barrel, down over three dollars from Friday evening. The last time prices were seen so low was in April 2000.
Iraq's Oil Minister Amr Rashid left Baghdad Monday for the meeting Wednesday of the 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the official INA news agency reported. Rashid is heading a delegation that includes oil ministry undersecretary Saddam Zaban, former director of the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), a ministry spokesman told INA.
The delegation is expected to submit a paper on "energy demand in the next 20 years and the development of oil prices," he said. The paper will focus on the "unfair embargoes imposed on Iraq and other countries that deprive consumers of oil, the cost of whose production is cheap."
A UN oil-for-food program launched in 1996 allows Baghdad, which has been under sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, to export crude to pay for imports of humanitarian supplies, war reparations and UN operations in Iraq. ― (AFP, Vienna)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
