OPEC Panel Agrees on $18 Target Price
OPEC’s price committee agreed Friday to recommend that the 13-nation cartel fix a target price of $18 a barrel for crude oil, an increase of about $4 over today’s average price.
But Ecuador’s deputy energy minister said OPEC’s 17-million-barrel daily output would have to be reduced to boost prices, which have plummeted this year, and he said the three-member committee did not address the question during the special daylong conference. Still, “we hope to go to a fixed price of $18 a barrel as soon as possible,” Fernando Santos said at the end of the closed-door meeting.
Santos said a separate committee that deals with output would consider quota issues before the full ministerial conference of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Geneva on Dec. 11. An OPEC experts committee is scheduled to meet Thursday in Vienna.
Santos said he expected the recommendation of $18 a barrel to be supported at the December OPEC conference because the three members on the price committee represent different geographical regions.
The price committee is made up of the energy ministers from Ecuador, Kuwait and Libya.
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