An OPEC advisory committee won't meet ahead of the gathering of ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Friday, underscoring expectations that the group will hold production steady at its first meeting of the year.
The committee, known as the Ministerial Monitoring Committee, comprises a small group of OPEC members, including Iran and Nigeria. It typically meets ahead of a meeting of the full OPEC-13 to gauge global oil supply and demand data and makes a policy recommendation to the group.
An OPEC spokesman said the committee would not meet this time.
The head of Libya's oil policy and Chief Executive of Libya's National Oil Co. Shokri Ghanem meanwhile, said he didn't see a need for OPEC to alter its current production policy.
"As I said before, I don't believe there is a need for OPEC to do anything," he said, ahead of his arrival in Vienna. "The market is well supplied."
Ghanem said there was concern within the 13-nation group about the health of global energy demand, led by worries about economic growth in the key consuming nations of the U.S. and Europe.
"Yes, there is concern about demand this year given all the problems we are seeing," he said. "But we will look at all the data when we meet on Friday."
OPEC ministers will meet this week amid a murky economic outlook as fears gather about the potential global fallout from a slowdown, or perhaps even a recession in the U.S. economy.
At its last meeting in December, OPEC kept production on hold, arguing that oil supplies were adequate and that high crude prices were being driven by speculative trading and other factors unrelated to supply and demand. The cartel's output accounts for 4 out of every 10 barrels consumed globally.