Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi said Thursday that the Kingdom had no immediate plans to boost crude output because there was no need to do so. He said he was “concerned about the (price) level” and suggested Saudi Arabia was ready to raise production if the Kingdom perceives that basics had changed, with supply no longer meeting demand. For now, “all our buyers are satisfied and happy,” he told reporters on the fringes of the 19th World Petroleum Congress and against a backdrop of soaring oil prices that temporarily hit a trading record above $146 a barrel. The World Petroleum Congress wrapped up Thursday with concern growing about a third oil shock but with little consensus about what to do about it. Oil briefly soared to a record near $146 a barrel Thursday, but fell back after the European Central Bank held back from signaling further rate hikes and rising unemployment in the United States underlined the fragility of the economy there. By the afternoon in Europe, light, sweet crude for August delivery was up 51 cents on the day to $144.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In the past, production boosts have been effective in driving prices down, but the buoyancy of the present market appears to be defying conventional control mechanisms. A recent Saudi pledge to add 200,000 barrels per day as of July to a 300,000 barrel-per-day production increase announced in May did not dent prices. US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson restated Washington's view Thursday, telling reporters in London: “There are questions in the short-term about the ability to meet the demand.” The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said Wednesday crude oil supplies fell by 2 million barrels last week. But Al-Naimi cautioned against attaching undue importance to the EIA's weekly snapshot. “Don't take one week's number and use it as a guideline,” he said, adding that crude stocks rose by 20 million barrels last month in the 30 industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Whatever we are seeing in the international oil market is driven by many factors, the least of which is the concern over the immediate supply.” He listed increased institutional investment, the weak dollar, Middle East tensions, concerns about natural catastrophes and “the fear the world is running out of fossil fuels” as boosting prices.
