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Doha: OPEC has "no magic solution'' to record crude prices, which reached a record above $135 a barrel, Qatar's oil minister said.
"We are producing at our maximum,'' Abdullah bin Hamad al- Attiyah said today in a phone interview from Doha. "We don't see a shortage in supply.''
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which produces 40 percent of the world's oil, has no plans to react before its scheduled meeting in September because there is nothing it can do, the minister said.
"Saudi Arabia said it would produce more oil, but still the price has gone up,'' al-Attiyah said.
"We have no magic solution. In the 90s, we received very strong advice from consuming countries to let the market decide prices, so that's what we are doing.''
Oil has surged 8.5 percent in the past week while futures contracts for 2016 gained $20 to $142 a barrel. Crude for July delivery rose as much as $1.87, or 1.4 percent, to $135.04 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange today. It was last at $134.39.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and most influential member of OPEC, announced a unilateral 300,000 barrel-a-day output increase on May 16 in response to a request from the U.S. President George Bush, citing customer demand.
OPEC has kept production unchanged at its past three meetings in December, February and March, saying the market is well- supplied.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst Arjun N. Murti said in a May 16 report that "the possibility of $150-$200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next 6-24 months.''
Investment banks should stop publishing price forecasts because the market is reacting and investors are chasing those gains, the minister said. "The price of oil is out of control.''
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