'Too soon to say' if OPEC will keep quotas unchanged: Daukoru

Vienna (Platts)--6Mar2006

OPEC ministers could meet informally during the next round of talks
between leading oil producing and consuming countries in Doha, Qatar, next
month, the cartel's Nigerian president Edmund Daukoru said Monday as he
arrived in Vienna ahead of Wednesday's OPEC conference.

     "We might get a chance to meet informally at the IEF," Daukoru said,
referring to the international Energy Forum which meets in the Qatari capital
April 22-24.

     Daukoru, who is also Nigeria's oil minister, said it was too early to
predict whether ministers would agree to keep crude production quotas
unchanged at this week's meeting. "It's too soon to say. We'll know in a few
days...I need to see the market report, we are meeting tomorrow."

     In fact OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has already signaled that Wednesday's
OPEC meeting is likely to maintain current quotas under a 28 million b/d
ceiling. Oil minister Ali Naimi was quoted earlier Monday as saying it would
be wrong for OPEC to adopt any decision on output that would raise oil prices
further and that he believed the group should not cut its production although
he was willing to listen to arguments to the contrary in Vienna.

     Naimi, speaking in an interview with the Saudi-owned newspaper al-Hayat
on the eve of his departure for Vienna, also ruled out an extraordinary
meeting ahead of the next scheduled conference in June.

     Kuwaiti oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Fahed al-Sabah also said Monday that he
supported maintaining the current OPEC ceiling because the oil price was too
high.

     Oil prices are holding firmly above $60 per barrel despite projections
that demand will fall sharply in the second quarter. US light crude futures
were trading at $63.20 at 1325 GMT.

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