OPEC chief says some members may cut oil output: Report

OPEC members including Saudi Arabia, Libya and Algeria may cut production to revive prices from a 2 1/2 month slump, Bloomberg reported Thursday quoting Edmund Daukoru, the president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, as saying.

Kuwait and Iran may also reduce output, Daukoru, who is also Nigeria's oil minister, said Thursday by telephone from Abuja. There is no formal agreement among OPEC member-countries to lower production, Daukoru said.

?The consensus that we can all agree on is that the market is very soft,? Daukoru said. ?It's more or less a free fall.?

Daukoru urged members Oct. 3 to lower production before OPEC's next regularly scheduled meeting in December, and started the process with a cut from his own country, Nigeria. Oil in New York has dropped 23 percent from a record $78.40 a barrel on July 14 as fuel stocks climbed and the risk of United Nations sanctions on Iran eased.

Algiers-based Algerie Presse Service, the country's state- owned news agency, today reported that OPEC will hold an emergency two-day meeting starting Oct. 18 at its headquarters in Vienna to consider slashing production by at least 1 million barrels a day. The report cited unidentified people.

Daukoru stopped short of ruling out an emergency meeting of the 11-member group to discuss production cuts. He said he's in consultations with members to discuss ?how much? and ?how soon? any cuts would take place.

Some OPEC members regularly pump more than their individual quotas allow, while others fall short of their official targets. Individual country quotas have been treated with ``benign neglect,'' Daukoru told reporters at OPEC's meeting last month.

?Our quota is 28 million barrels,? Iran's OPEC governor, Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, said on Sept. 12. ``How we distribute it among ourselves is none of your business.''

Some OPEC members earlier said no agreement for a cut had been reached.

?There is no agreement for an informal cut, or any type of cut,? Kuwait's oil minister, Sheikh Ali-Jarrah al-Sabah, said in an interview. ?I've had no consultations with other ministers.?

Indonesia hasn't received any information from OPEC President Daukoru on lowering output, said Maizar Rachman, OPEC's governor for Indonesia. (*)