Purnomo: OPEC likely to keep output unchanged

Indonesia said on Thursday the OPEC producers' cartel was likely to leave official crude production limits unchanged when it meets at the end of July if oil prices stayed at current levels.

"At this price range we will be happy and we will not do anything to change the quotas," Indonesia's Oil Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro told reporters on the sidelines of an ASEAN energy ministers meeting in Langkawi, off the west coast of Malaysia.

Ministers of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are due to review production policy and the group's output ceiling of 25.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in Vienna on July 31.

U.S. light crude (CLc1) is currently trading at $30.14 a barrel, while OPEC's reference basket price of seven crudes stood at $27.19 a barrel on Tuesday, at the top end of the group's $22-$28 target band.

"But the supply/demand balance can be affected by non-fundamentals like the strike in Nigeria. There is also uncertainty in Iraq but the good news is that last month they sold 10 million barrels of Iraq crude," Purnomo said.

Unions conducting a general strike in Nigeria are threatening to cut off the country's crude exports of more than two million barrels per day if the government does not reverse stiff fuel price hikes.

OPEC raised group production earlier this year to counter supply disruptions from Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq, where exports stalled just before the U.S.-led invasion in March to topple Saddam Hussein.

Iraq recently returned to the market, selling almost 10 million barrels of crude that had been put into storage before the war. Production in the country is still struggling to get back to pre-war levels.(*)