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Gold/Mining/Energy : Anyone following UTI Energy Corp.? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Susan Saline who wrote (779)	6/5/1998 12:08:00 PM
From: Captain James T. Kirk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1305

lots of back stabbing going on: FOCUS-Oil producers in search of additional cuts (adds reactions, prices) By Matt Daily AMSTERDAM, June 5 (Reuters) - The oil ministers of giant producers Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico on Friday began to drum up support among other petroleum exporting nations for their plan to withdraw more supply from the saturated market. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi left Amsterdam following secret talks with his Venezuelan and Mexican counterparts resulting in agreement late on Thursday to shave 450,000 barrels a day. The three called on other producers inside and outside the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to join the cuts, which come two months after reductions orchestrated by the trio in March in the so-called Riyadh pact. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer, said it would remove 225,000 barrels daily while Venezuela agreed to cut by 125,000 barrels a day and Mexico by 100,000. Oil traders gave the deal a guarded welcome and crude prices ticked a little higher, gaining 20 cents to $14.68 a barrel by 1223 GMT. ''Now the hard work begins. It's a step in the right direction but they now need to get cooperation from the other producers,'' said Nigel Saperia, head of oil trading at Bankers Trust International in London Prices meanwhile remain $5 below last year's prices, slicing deeply into producers' vital export revenues and hitting the earnings of major oil companies. The initial response from fellow exporters was hardly encouraging. Mexico's Oil Minister Luis Tellez immediately travelled to fellow non-OPEC supplier Norway but Norwegian Oil Minister Marit Arnstad said after meeting him that she had no plans to make a further cut to her country's 3.1 million bpd production. The early reaction from Saudi Gulf ally Kuwait was that the emirate would make only a token cut to support the deal, a source familiar with Kuwaiti thinking said late on Thursday. OPEC member Indonesia said it had no plans to reduce its supply. ''We have not thought about cutting oil output at the moment, because our production is not big,'' Indonesian Energy Minister Kuntoro Mangukusubroto said in Jakarta. Nigeria said it would consider a further reduction. Tellez, meanwhile, said he expected at least a further 150,000 barrels daily to be pledged in total by two more OPEC members. He declined to name them. A Saudi official said Riyadh expected other OPEC states to pledge cuts before the OPEC meeting ministerial meeting in Vienna on June 24. ''The sooner others in OPEC and non-OPEC react the better the effect will be on the market,'' a senior Saudi official said from Riyadh. The Riyadh deal, named after the Saudi Arabian capital where the producers cooked up the first cuts, eventually saw some 15 countries, mostly OPEC members, agree to slice 1.5 million bpd or about 2.5 percent from the 75 million barrel-a-day market. But the recovery of oil prices from nine-year lows of below $12 for North Sea Brent has been stunted by falling Asian demand, high petroleum stocks and the failure of some exporters to honour pledges to cut. ''If the original cutbacks had taken place then prices would gradually be recovering by now,'' said Mehdi Varzi, head of energy research at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson said. ''As it is only about 850,000 bpd has actually been cut of the 1.5 million bpd pledged,'' he said. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------