Azerbaijan, Baku, March. 9 / Trend /
OPEC should wait to see how events in Libya unfold before calling an emergency meeting about prices and production, Bloomberg reported according to Angolan Oil Minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos.
"The information that we have is that the market is supplied," Botelho de Vasconcelos told reporters at an IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston. Prices have risen because of geopolitical problems in North Africa, and "we need to wait a little bit" to act "because for example in Egypt and Tunisia, they took about 15 or 20 days" to resolve their internal unrest.
Oil fell from the highest level since September 2008 today after Kuwait's oil minister said members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are discussing whether to convene an "urgent meeting."
Botelho de Vasconcelos said he hasn't heard from OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri about any plans for an emergency meeting. The next scheduled meeting is in June.
"Maybe when I go back to my country, maybe," he said.
Speculators are causing oil price volatility, Botelho de Vasconcelos said.
Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah, Kuwait's oil minister, said in Kuwait City today that El-Badri "is calling everybody and making a consensus on whether we'll need an OPEC meeting, an urgent meeting," to discuss a possible increase.
Crude oil for April delivery dropped 42 cents, or 0.4 percent, to settle at $105.02 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract ended yesterday at $105.44, the highest settlement since Sept. 26, 2008. Futures are up 28 percent from a year ago.