The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may increase production at a December meeting as oil rises above $75 a barrel, a price deemed fair by producers, the group’s president said.

“We have always defended a position of equilibrium,” Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, who is also Angola’s oil minister, said in an interview late yesterday. “Some countries are available to pump more oil into the market and if it comes to be necessary to pump more oil into the market this will be done.”
OPEC will meet Dec. 22 in Luanda, Angola, to review its production quotas. Crude futures have rallied 79 percent this year, trading at around $80 a barrel today in New York as the group implements its biggest supply reduction.
Oil at $100 a barrel would make a supply boost inevitable because “it is necessary to maintain the equilibrium,” the minister said.
An increase would depend on whether prices remain at $75 to $80 a barrel, stockpiles return to the five-year average and floating inventories disappear, OPEC’s Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said Oct. 22.
Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Sabah said Oct. 6 that OPEC is unlikely to change output targets at the December gathering and that it is “impossible” for the organization to raise production this year. Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest member and de facto leader, has yet to express an opinion.
OPEC’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Iraq is exempt from the quota system.
(Source:Bloomberg)