"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.

Updated: July 8, 2008