Algeria's oil minister, who is also OPEC's new president, ruled out any new production increases and said Saturday that crude oil prices are likely to remain high for three months.
Crude oil prices _ which briefly topped US$100 per barrel for the first time this week _ should "stabilize" in the second quarter, Oil Minister Chakib Khelil said.
The increase in market crude prices "is probably going to remain through the end of the first quarter of 2008," Khelil told reporters at an energy-related conference in the Algerian capital, Algiers.
Political tensions in nuclear-armed Pakistan, rising violence in oil-rich Nigeria and shrinking U.S. crude oil stocks were among factors unsettling the market and contributing to the price hike, Khelil said.
For now, the market is "sufficiently supplied and only the next OPEC conference can decide whether to increase production," he said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries next meets Feb. 1 in Vienna, Austria.
Khelil said the cartel then "will study closely forecasts about growth in the world economy" _ notably the U.S. economy, which has been feeling the fallout from troubles in the American mortgage market.
However, he said: "If the (possible) recession in the American economy takes shape, OPEC is not going to increase its supply from the moment that is needed only to reduce it later."
At their last meeting in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Dec. 5, ministers from OPEC member countries left production unchanged "for the time being" because the world was "well supplied."
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