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London/Dubai:Opec is "very likely" to cut oil production at its extraordinary meeting in Vienna on November 18 because prices have fallen ""dramatically," Chakib Khelil, the group's president, said.
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced the meeting Thursday after the global financial crisis sent crude prices below $90 (Dh330.70) a barrel.
"The decision will very likely be to cut production," Khelil said in a telephone interview.
Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah Bin Hamad Al Attiyah and Shokri Ganem, chairman of Libya's National Oil Corp, had earlier told Bloomberg that they backed such a summit next month. Opec was scheduled to next meet on December 17 in Algeria.
The "reasons for the fall of oil prices will be considered in this meeting," Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-hossein Nozari said Thursday, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.
Opec resolved at its most recent meeting in Vienna last month to stick more closely to official quotas, implying a cut of about 500,000 barrels a day.
"The organisation is concerned about the deteriorating economic conditions with contagion risks," Opec's Vienna-based secretariat said in an e-mailed statement.
The gathering will "discuss the global financial crisis, the world economic situation and the impacts on the oil market."
Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency (IEA) yesterday cut its oil demand growth forecast for 2008 to its lowest rate in percentage terms since 1993, citing economic weakness and "a spiralling liquidity crisis".
It reduced its 2008 growth forecast by 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) compared with its previous monthly report to 440,000 bpd and lowered its 2009 prediction by 190,000 bpd to 690,000 bpd.
The Paris-based agency, which represents 28 industrialised nations, has so far pared around half a million bpd from its 2008 global demand estimate and 400,000 bpd from its 2009 estimate.
The impact of global economic weakness is most acute in developed countries and developing econ-omies are showing "a degree of resilience," it said.
"Although non-OECD slowdown is also likely, it is by no means certain that growth will be choked off altogether. We have yet to see unambiguous evidence of a sharp slow-down in China, while Middle Eastern demand growth remains robust."
But the IEA cautioned against too much focus on demand and said the credit crisis was also impacting supply, which could at some stage support oil prices.
"Credit shortages are rapidly becoming yet another in a long line of impediments to industry investment," it said.
Non-Opec net output growth has been almost wiped out for this year to an average of only 150,000 bpd.
The IEA said the impact of Opec's decision in September to agree strictly to its output targets had so far reduced its output by 300,000 bpd to 32.3 million bpd last month.
The official production quota for 11 of Opec's members is 28.8 million barrels a day.
Collectively, those members exceeded that target by 390,000 barrels a day in September, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Those 11 nations do not include Iraq, which has no quota, and Indonesia, set to leave Opec next year.
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