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OPEC happy with oil between $70-$80 a barrel

14 September 2010 15:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA-Economics. The Opec oil cartel is â€œcomfortableâ€ with oil prices ranging $70 to $80 a barrel, suggesting it is unlikely to alter its production levels, the groupâ€™s secretary-general said on the cartelâ€™s 50th anniversary, Financial Times reported.

Abdalla El-Badri said that Opec wanted â€œto leave things as they are for the time beingâ€, in a coded message which suggests that the group would leave its production unchanged when it meets next month.

â€œPrices are moving $70-$80 a barrel. This is comfortable at this time,â€ he said.
Mr El-Badri added that the range was adequate taking into account the global economic recovery, particularly the recent weakness in economic growth in the US, Japan and Europe. â€œIf circumstances change, we may change our mind. We want to leave things as they are for the time being,â€ he said. â€œWe donâ€™t want to see a double-dip recession as it would affect negatively everybody.â€

The secretary-general, nonetheless, urged Opec members to improve their compliance with the groupâ€™s official levels, after cheating surged recently.

Opec will review its production targets in a meeting in Vienna on October 14 and it is set to meet again before the end of the year in Quito, the capital of Ecuador.

In early afternoon trading on Tuesday, Brent crude oil traded at $78.67 a barrel, down 38 cents. Oil prices have hovered between $70 and $80 since last October, pressured down by weak oil demand and boosted by a series of deep and rapid production cuts engineered by the cartel between late 2008 and early 2009.

Opec celebrated on Tuesday 50 years since its foundation on September 14, 1960 in a conference in Baghdad. Mr El-Badri was upbeat on the cartelâ€™s future, saying that the world will continue to rely on oil for the next half century.