OPEC sees oversupply, wants to stop excessive stockbuild

OPEC sees oversupply, wants to stop excessive stockbuild:official

London (Platts)--6Dec2004


OPEC believes there is oversupply in the world oil market and wants to stop
inventories from rising too much, the organization's acting secretary general
said on Monday, a sign the group may weigh cutting output when its oil
ministers meet this week. 

There is a surplus of between 1.5-mil b/d and 2-mil-b/d in the market, said

Maizar Rahman, Indonesia's OPEC governor and the acting secretary general at

OPEC's Vienna headquarters. "There is a little bit of over-supply," he said

by telephone. "We don't want to let stocks build too much. If the stocks are

too high, it will affect the market." Crude slid by several dollars last week

after the latest US inventory figures showed a greater-than-expected increase

in distillate stocks, easing concern about winter supplies. US light crude has

declined more than $13/bbl from an all-time high reached Oct 25 of $55.67.

OPEC ministers will meet Dec 10 in Cairo to decide how much crude oil to pump

in the first quarter of the new year.

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