NYT: OPEC Set to Open Oil Taps Full Blast [View All]

[DeepModem Mom]

OPEC Set to Open Oil Taps Full Blast
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: September 20, 2005


VIENNA, Sept. 19 - OPEC delegates said Monday that the group planned to allow its members to provide up to two million barrels a day of additional crude oil if the market needs it. But oil traders brushed aside the move and instead sent oil prices higher on worries of another possible hurricane....

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The latest hurricane warnings helped push oil prices up on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and they closed Monday at $67.39 a barrel, up $4.39. Natural gas futures hit a record on Monday, closing at $12.663 per thousand cubic feet, up $1.519.

Forecasters issued a hurricane warning for parts of Southern Florida and said that by early Saturday, Rita, the 17th named storm of the Atlantic season, could make landfall near Houston, an area that is a major port and home to many refineries and petrochemical plants....

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OPEC's highly unusual decision to put on call an extra 7 percent of its production is expected to be formally announced Tuesday at the end of the group's two-day meeting in Vienna. Some oil ministers said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries wanted to show it was doing all it could to lower oil prices even as they blamed refining shortages for the current situation.

Under the proposal, which members have been discussing in meetings since Sunday, OPEC producers would provide as much oil as refiners and other buyers asked for, without regard to previous production limits or quotas. The production ceiling, now set at 28 million barrels a day and shared by all 11 members except Iraq, would theoretically remain unchanged....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/business/worldbusiness/20opec.html