CARACAS (AFP) -- Venezuela will ask the OPEC cartel next week to cut oil production by between 500,000 and one million barrels per day, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez was quoted as saying Friday.

Ramirez told local media that his country would ask for a production cut at the March 8 meeting in Vienna of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. "Our position is that we must evaluate a cut of between 500,000 and one million barrels per day (bpd)," Ramirez was quoted as saying.

"It is our position that we will discuss this there."

He added that the "fundamentals of the market bring us to a production cut."

Last month, Kuwait's energy minister suggested the market may be oversupplied and that an OPEC cut may be on the table.

"We believe the market is well-supplied and we believe the second quarter will be over-supplied ... with between 1-2 million bpd," Sheikh Ahmad Fahd al-Sabah told reporters in parliament in February.

"We have to wait for our March meeting. If necessary and if prices will go back to be determined by supply and demand, we have to do our cut," Sheikh Ahmad said.

Venezuela, the only Latin American member of the cartel, has a quota of 3.2 million bpd, of which 1.5 million is sold to the United States.

Prior to violence breaking out last Thursday in Nigeria, Africa's biggest producer of crude, analysts had predicted that OPEC would cut output when it meets in Vienna at the start of March.

At its last meeting on January 31, OPEC decided to keep its production ceiling of 28 million barrels per day.