"The common feeling is that calling on producers to
increase production is very important. However, it is no solution to the
problem. There are speculative and many other factors that are involved." The call on oil
producers to increase production cannot solve the issue of high oil prices
as there are other factors, including speculation, which affect the oil
price behavior, the deputy director of the foreign organizations department
with the Russian foreign ministry Alexander Pankin said Tuesday on the
sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Toyako, northern Japan.
"We are losing 30% of budget revenue to the Niger
Delta crisis but the impact of the loss is not being felt because of...high
crude oil price in the international market." Nigeria is losing
about 30% of its projected revenue for 2008 to the unrest in the oil
producing Niger Delta region but the economy has managed to stay afloat
through high oil prices, the Punch newspaper Tuesday reported the country's
junior Finance Minister Remi Babalola as saying.