Scorching oil prices will not fall despite the efforts of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, its president said Tuesday in the aftermath of the decision by Saudi Arabia, the group's de facto leader, to spur crude output higher.
Speaking ahead of an E.U.-OPEC meeting here, Chakib Khelil, who is also Algeria's oil minister, told reporters that "prices won't come down".
His comments come two days after King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced a further 200,000 barrels-a-day increase in the kingdom's production that lifts its basic crude output, excluding additional hydrocarbons such as natural gas liquids, to the highest level in 27-years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The E.U.'s Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said ahead of the talks that there was no evidence of behind-the-scenes manipulation of oil prices and that financial speculation wasn't a major role.
He is to ask OPEC Tuesday to abandon its output quotas, though the group has ignored its self-imposed quotas for some years in the face of rocketing oil prices.
Such quotas will likely return center stage if oil prices plunge, threatening the revenues of OPEC's member countries.