Consensus eludes oil exporters

Press, 17 October 1986, Page 6

Consensus eludes oil exporters

NZPA-Reuter Geneva O.P.E.C. was in disarray yesterday as the oil exporters made virtually no progress in their search for a new agreement to control production, and hence to stop prices tumbling in the present glut. But delegates to a 10-day-old conference of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries said a crucial plenary session of the Oil Ministers on Wednesday evening did suggest that an eventual

solution might be reached. Ministers at least seemed to display the political will to try to confront a crisis facing the cartel: what to do when a makeshift agreement on output quotas runs out on October 31. .That stopgap accord, sponsored by Iran, raised prices from under SUSIO a barrel this summer to a shaky $l4 now. But Saudi Arabia’s delegation continued to insist yesterday that the kingdom, the largest exporter,

opposes a straight renewal of that agreement. “That’s it,” said the Saudi Minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, when asked if the Saudis still insisted on setting permanent quotas, a goal that has eluded O.P.E.C. for years. Delegates said it was clear that Ministers could not yet agree even on how to define the criteria on which new quotas would be set. Oil reserves, past output and population are some of the factors. They had yet to tackle the really difficult issue of

what weight to attach to these in fixing quotas. Non-Gulf sources said there was real doubt that a new set of permanent quotas would result from this meeting. The sources did not rule out a compromise solution. This could .involve extending the present makeshift agreement until the end of the year, with further talks beforehand to set a ceiling for total O.P.E.C. volume for the first quarter of 1987 and to assign quotas within that.