March 16, 2010, 5:52 AM EDT
By Rachel Graham
March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil was little changed after Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest producer, said oil prices are in the right range and there’s no need to change production policy.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi doesn’t see any reason to disturb “this happy situation,” he said yesterday in Vienna. A U.S. government report on oil inventories tomorrow may show crude stocks rose for a seventh week.
“It’s a waiting day on the oil market,” said Hannes Loacker, a Raiffeisen Zentralbank Oesterreich analyst in Vienna. “I am not expecting any surprises” from OPEC, he said.
Crude oil for April delivery traded at $79.54 a barrel, down 26 cents, in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 9:17 a.m. London time, after falling as low as $79.32 a barrel. Brent crude oil for May settlement, the most active contract on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, fell 29 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $78.34 a barrel.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps about 40 percent of the world’s oil, meets for the first time this year tomorrow. Kuwait also sees consensus among OPEC members to maintain oil output as prices that are near $80 a barrel meet the group’s predictions.
“No change, no change,” Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed al- Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters at Kuwait’s parliament today when asked about production quotas. Sheikh Ahmed said he will attend the meeting in Vienna tomorrow.
OPEC cut production quotas by a record 4.2 million barrels a day at the end of 2008 as demand plunged. Compliance with those quotas fell to 53 percent in February, OPEC said last week in its monthly report.
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-16/crude-oil-trades-below-80-on-concern-demand-isn-t-keeping-up.html
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