OPEC Oil Output Stays at 20-Year Low, Report Says

OPEC oil production remained at a 20-year low in June and may have dropped even more in recent days as buyers wait to see if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cuts prices at its ministerial meeting Friday, according to a published report Tuesday.

Platt’s Oilgram News, a newsletter covering international oil markets, said in a report quoting unidentified sources in OPEC and the oil industry that OPEC production totaled between 14.3 million and 14.5 million barrels a day in June. That is about the same as estimated for May and is the organization’s lowest production since 1965.

Oil ministers from the 13 OPEC nations are to meet in Vienna on Friday to consider ways to defend official prices at a time when demand for OPEC oil is so low that production is well below the cartel’s ceiling of 16 million barrels a day.

On Monday, Venezuela’s oil minister, Arturo Hernandez Grisanti, criticized non-OPEC members Britain, Norway, Egypt and the Soviet Union for lowering prices, saying that many will again become importers of petroleum once their supplies run out.

“Their desperation for maximizing production causes them to constantly weaken prices and also to rapidly use up their own petroleum reserves,” Hernandez said. “Many of the non-OPEC producers will become importers again in the coming decades and will depend on exports from OPEC member countries.”

Hernandez made his remarks in Vienna, where he is attending preliminary OPEC meetings, and the comments also were released in Venezuela in an energy ministry press bulletin.