OPEC Chief Denies Rumors of Vienna Meeting : Energy: Nonetheless, the reports persist. Oil ministers are concerned that crude prices may collapse once the war ends.

OPEC President Sadek Boussena denied reports Monday that he plans to meet next week with other ministers about the turmoil in oil markets caused by the Gulf War.

But other sources insisted that Boussena, the Algerian petrochemicals minister, would be in Vienna on Monday for informal consultations with ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“It’s going on,” said a source, who demanded anonymity. “It is a meeting of some ministers. I don’t think more than four or five will come.”

After a flurry of reports about the talks, the headquarters of the 13-nation oil cartel issued a statement quoting Boussena as saying “no meeting of OPEC, formal or informal, will take place in Vienna next week,” the week of Feb. 25.

“The only meeting due to be held in the near future is that of the ministerial monitoring committee scheduled for March 11,” the statement said.

At their winter conference in December, the ministers scheduled the March meeting to take a fresh look at the oil situation in view of the crisis in the oil-rich Gulf region.

The reports of next week’s meeting first surfaced in the Middle East Economic Survey, an authoritative oil newsletter published in Cyprus.

Other sources confirmed that informal consultations would take place and that a message concerning the talks was circulated to the member nations last Friday.

Venezuela’s oil minister, Celestino Armas, planned to be in Vienna for the discussions, one source said.

The Middle East Economic Survey reported that Boussena’s offer for talks received “a decidedly cool reception” from crude producers on the Arabian peninsula.

Oil ministers from those countries were unlikely to attend because they consider the discussions to be ill-timed because of the fighting in the Gulf region, it said. OPEC countries on the Arabian peninsula include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Ministers have been discussing the oil situation by telephone and would get a chance to sit down together in Vienna and talk further about their ideas, the sources said.

One source said the ministers are worried that crude prices, which have fluctuated wildly since the crisis began, might collapse once the war ends. The source noted that prices tumbled Friday on the possibility of peace in the Gulf after Iraq’s conditional proposal to withdraw from Kuwait.

He suggested that the ministers may float some ideas for how to tackle the problem at the March meeting.

OPEC Secretary-General Subroto said the “main subject of concern at present was the low prices of oil as a result of the Gulf War,” according to a report by the Libyan state news agency Jana.

He said there were fears that the situation could worsen in the second half of the year because of the current oil glut.

OPEC suspended all production caps in August to produce at its maximum to make up for about 4 million barrels of lost Iraqi and Kuwaiti crude. The oil was pulled off the market after the United Nations imposed trade sanctions to protest Iraq’s Aug. 2 occupation of Kuwait.

Saudi Arabia has increased its output to make up for most of the embargoed Iraqi and Kuwaiti crude. The International Energy Agency estimated that the kingdom pumped about 8 million barrels a day in January, well over its previous OPEC daily supply cap of 5.4 million barrels.

In all, the energy agency said the cartel supplied 22.9 million barrels a day of crude to the market in January.