IT'S NOT A SUPPLY PROBLEM...:

OPEC May Lift Quotas (Stephen Voss and James Cordahi, September 19, 2005, Bloomberg News)

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may agree to offer customers every barrel of oil that members can produce, effectively suspending the group's quota system.

OPEC has 2 million barrels of production capacity idle, Sheikh Ahmad Fahd Sabah, the OPEC president and Kuwaiti oil minister, said in Vienna, where OPEC meets today. [...]

The oil ministers for the United Arab Emirates, Mohamed bin Dhaen Hamli, and Venezuela, Rafael Ramirez, said such a decision may not lead to lower gasoline prices because of bottlenecks in the refining system.

OPEC today will start its two-day meeting to deliberate an increase in the official output ceiling, now at 28 million barrels a day for the members outside of Iraq. Those members produced 28.55 million barrels a day last month.

"The market is very well supplied," the United Arab Emirates' Hamli said.

...but it might have some good psychological effect.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 19, 2005 12:00 AM