New OPEC chief sees higher oil price on recovery: Report

OPEC's new secretary-general Alvaro Silva underlined his reputation as an oil price hawk on Thursday, saying that the world should see even higher prices once stable economic growth returns, Reuters reported.

Silva, a former Venezuelan oil minister who was picked to head up the cartel on Wednesday, said high energy costs of the past two years had done no harm to the world economy, contradicting some Western economists who believe that oil played a part in the slump.

"The prices we have seen for the past couple of years did not damage the world economy and I say that not just because we have studied it, but because consumers were satisfied with them and never said they did any harm," Silva told reporters in the Austrian capital where OPEC has its headquarters.

Huge cuts in OPEC production in 1999 helped push Brent prices above $30 a barrel for several months in 2000, hiking energy bills in the West and crimping company profits.

The cuts prompted intense diplomatic efforts by the United States and other consuming countries to lobby OPEC for more supply.

But Silva maintained that the biggest oil boom in two decades, which continues to some extent today, had no role to play in the downturn.

"After the world economic downturn, one element that could help accelerate a recovery is lower oil prices, but nobody ever said that oil caused the decline," he said. (*)