It’s official: OPEC will announce 1M barrel per day cut in oil production

Algerian Energy Minister Chehib Khelil said Oct. 15 that OPEC will announce a 1 million barrel a day cut in crude production.

“All the countries are in agreement to contribute to reduce OPEC production by 1 million barrels and we will make our official announcement at our next meeting in Doha, (Qatar), from Oct 18-21,” Khelil told reporters outside the Algerian parliament in the capital, Algiers.

The dates Khelil mentioned did not appear to be consistent with those announced by Levi Ajuonuma, the senior spokesman for Nigeria’s state-owned oil company, who said the Doha meeting is a one-day event that will take place on Oct. 19.

Another official, Peter Ogbonnaya, spokesman for Nigerian oil minister and OPEC President Edmund Daukoru, said Oct. 15 the meeting had been called off, but Ajuonuma said he was wrong. Earlier in October Daukoru said the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries was considering an emergency meeting to discuss its response to a fall in oil prices, which have declined sharply in recent weeks from their mid-July high of $78.40 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Light, sweet crude settled Oct. 13 at $58.57 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The last time OPEC trimmed its output — by 1 million barrels a day — was December 2004 when oil traded slightly above $40 a barrel.

—The Associated Press