Iraq: Ignore US Calls for More Oil
FEBRUARY 27, 13:38 EST
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) ? The United States has no right to pressure oil-producing countries to raise output in order to bring down the price of crude on global markets, Iraq's oil minister said Sunday.
``We consider this unwarranted and unjustified, and it is an overreaction by the American administration,' Oil Minister Amer Mohammed Rashid said in response to a U.S. bid to persuade Gulf oil producers to loosen reins on output.
Rashid urged his partners in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries not to yield to American pressure.
U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ended a tour Saturday of leading Gulf oil producers, including oil giant Saudi Arabia, in a bid to persuade them to support a production increase to force down oil prices that have been surging near $30 a barrel ? and that have American consumers complaining about high costs of heating oil and gasoline.
Richardson said on Saturday he had obtained an encouraging response from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, to his plea to pump more oil, but left the region with no firm commitments.
OPEC oil ministers are scheduled to meet March 27 in Vienna to decide whether the time has come to open the tap at least slightly on their self-imposed cuts.
The reductions, along with those by non-OPEC members, have denied markets of more than 4 million barrels a day for nearly a year, sending prices to levels unseen since the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Though world oil supplies are at dangerously low levels, Iraq has slashed exports by up to 400,000 barrels a day. Rashid warned of further cuts if the United Nations continues to places holds on applications for equipment so that Iraq can upgrade its flagging oil sector.
Under a U.N. oil-for-food program, started in 1996, Iraq can sell oil under U.N. financial controls, with proceeds funding U.N. humanitarian programs as well as paying for oil spare parts.
Since May 1998, the council has authorized Iraq to buy $1.2 billion worth of spare parts. But Iraq says only $186 million in equipment has been sent.
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