Oil chiefs gather in war-scarred Angola

I / Luanda(angola) December 21, 2009, 14:33 IST

OPEC oil producers gathered in poverty-stricken Angola today said they would hold output firm amid comfortably high prices at their first ever meeting hosted by Africa's new crude-pumping giant.

Convening against the backdrop of an oil boom in a country ruined by three decades of war, OPEC members expected to hold firm the emergency oil quota cuts agreed a year ago, hoping for a strengthening of the oil market.

"We will keep with the decisions that we have taken in the past on production quotas and leave our goals unchanged," Angolan Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos said on the radio ahead of the meeting.

Observers had said ministers at Tuesday's meeting would have one eye on Iraq's recovering oil industry and its ambitious plans to ramp up its production to levels that could rival OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani told reporters yesterday he did not expect to tackle the question of production allowances for Iraq, while stressing its special situation as a country recovering from war.

"I don't expect any discussion on setting quotas or even discussing till we reach the point when there is a significant increase of Iraqi production," likely in two or three years, he said.