OPEC Ministers Still Split Over Oil Output Quotas
Ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries on Saturday made what delegates said was agonizingly slow progress toward reconciling rival ambitions to sell more oil within a new system of output quotas.
The 13 oil ministers held a brief formal opening session and then adjourned with differences unresolved. The ministers resumed bilateral talks at their hotel.
Two days of informal pre-conference haggling failed to produce an OPEC response to the threat of lower world oil prices posed by the excess production of two Persian Gulf states, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
“We have nothing concrete on the table, only ideas,” said Indonesian Oil Minister Ginanjar Kartasasmita.
Rilwanu Lukman of Nigeria, a veteran consensus-builder who was elected to an eighth term as OPEC president, pleaded in a speech: “We must . . . relax some of our entrenched positions.”
Kuwait and the UAE are at present outside OPEC’s quota system, saying their assigned quotas are unfairly low. Delegates said one problem in the talks Saturday was the UAE’s inability to commit itself so far to any suggested quota.
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