‘US should access emergency oil’

OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the US should tap its emergency oil reserve, as members pump near their limit in a failed bid to lower prices from a record high.

The call increases pressure on US President George W Bush to use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, amassed after the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s.

The acting secretary-general of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Maizar Rahman, said late yesterday in Moscow, oil prices may surge to $80 a barrel because members of the group have little spare capacity to compensate for disruptions to supplies.