The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) warned Tuesday that it could cut output again if prices keep falling despite an emergency reduction last week. OPEC, which produces 40 percent of the world's crude, could hold a new emergency meeting before its next scheduled session in December, its Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri said. “We will have to wait and see how the market will react ... (but) if this problem continues then we will have another cut,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an oil conference in London. “If the situation deteriorated to the point where we had to have another meeting before Algeria we will do that,” he said, referring to the next scheduled OPEC meeting in Oran, Algeria, on Dec. 17. “If the market reacted badly (to the cut in oil production) we will meet before that.” Oil prices rallied after the OPEC chief's comments, after dipping below $60 on Monday. New York's main contract, light sweet crude for December delivery, rose $1.81 to $65.03 a barrel. OPEC ministers agreed at an emergency meeting in Vienna on Friday to slash output by 1.5 million barrels a day from Nov. 1 as it seeks to shore up prices. The OPEC chief said a fair price for a barrel of oil would be “something in between” the record high of more than $147 reached in July and current levels of around $60. Speaking before hundreds of oil industry executives at the Oil and Money conference in London, he earlier said that OPEC could not be expected to bail the world out over the current economic crisis, particularly since it was “created in the (United) States.” OPEC cannot be expected to bail out the world over the current global financial crisis, its secretary general said. The United States must take the lead in resolving the crisis, which stemmed from a US-based credit crunch last year, he said. “What is surprising me is everybody looking at OPEC to bail out this crisis. In OPEC, we are most of us very poor countries, we cannot bail out this crisis,” he told an industry conference in London. “This crisis created in the States must be solved within the States, they are capable of doing it,” he added at the Oil and Money conference held in a London hotel. Meanwhile, the Energy Minister of OPEC member Qatar, Abdulla bin Hamad Al-Attiyah, rebuffed criticism notably by Britain and the United States over OPEC's production cuts. “If you're saying to me ‘no, don't do it,' give me the alternative, give me the solution. But you can't say to me ‘don't do it, you're the bad boy,' but with no solution.” The United Arab Emirates' Energy Minister Mohamed Bin Dhaen Al Hamli, whose country is also an OPEC member, warned that low oil prices would be “very dangerous for the world economy” and could lead to a crisis of investment. OPEC chief Badri said Britain had cancelled plans for a December summit of oil producer and consumer countries, due to difficulties over who would attend. The meeting had been scheduled for December 19. “The British government cancelled the summit ... the British were not clear, they did not invite some of the (OPEC) heads of state,” he said. Brown's Downing Street office later said the summit was still on. Brown first raised the possibility of a summit meeting at talks in Jeddah in June, when Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah launched an offensive against oil market speculators and called for greater transparency in oil market dealings.
