OPEC wants to see oil prices fall faster

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wants oil prices to fall faster to an ideal price of around US$30 a barrel, and will discuss whether to increase production at a meeting next month, the group's president said on Thursday.

"Oil prices have retreated, but we want them to fall to around $30 per barrel," Purnomo Yusgiantoro told reporters. "That would be good enough."

U.S. light, sweet crude futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange have fallen nearly $6 from a record highs of almost $50 a barrel last week.

Purnomo, who is also Indonesia's minister of energy and mineral resources, said that the group would discuss whether to increase its official output ceiling at a meeting in Vienna next month.

"That's part of the agenda," he told reporters. "If we consider that (raising output) needs to be done, we will take an inventory on how much spare capacity we have from each member of OPEC, so we can raise OPEC quotas."

OPEC's current production ceiling, excluding Iraq, is around 26 million barrels per day (bpd).

The rise in oil prices has been fueled by fears of terrorist attacks in the United States, disruptions to Iraqi crude exports, and uncertainty over the fate of troubled Russian oil giant Yukos. (*)