OPEC pumps more to cut prices

OPEC, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, is supplying enough crude oil, and rising crude prices reflect speculation amid threats to stability in the Middle East, a senior Iranian OPEC official said.

“Price behaviour seems to be irrespective to the supply of crude oil,” Hossein Kazempour Ardebili, Iran’s OPEC governor, said by telephone.

“There are long positions of the speculators. This could only reflect concern and anxieties for the supply of crude oil.”

The comment came as crude oil in the US neared $40 a barrel, 55% higher than a year earlier. Iran is the second-largest OPEC producer and the source of more than a third of the world’s crude.

OPEC wants crude prices to fall from a 13-year high and is pumping more oil than promised, said an official from Indonesia, current holder of the group’s presidency.

Brent crude oil yesterday rose above $37 a barrel for the first time since October 1990.

OPEC in February pledged to lower production starting in April to stop inventories from rising too high, while the International Energy Agency, which represents consumers, has called for more oil.

“We are supplying about two million barrels above the agreed production level,” Maizar Rahman, Indonesia’s OPEC governor, said by phone from Vienna, where he is acting for Indonesian energy minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro as OPEC secretary-general.

“We have no problem with this production because the price is high and we want prices to go down.”

OPEC agreed in February to cut its quota by 4%, to 23.5 million barrels a day as of April 1.