Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are expected to leave the organization's output unchanged when they meet in Cairo Saturday, an OPEC delegate said Thursday.
"It is a consultative meeting, and I wouldn't think OPEC ministers would take a decision to cut production at that meeting," the delegate told Dow Jones Newswires.
He also said that the Cairo meeting would review OPEC members' compliance with the 1.5 million barrels a day cut announced in October. So far some 85% of that has been already implemented, he added. He said that full data on implementation of that cut won't be available before Dec. 15.
The delegate also said he doesn't expect that Russia will implement any real oil-production cut in cooperation with OPEC. "The Russians always say that they are going to cut their (oil) production but they have never done so." He also said that Russia would never join OPEC.
The delegate's comments about the Cairo meeting Saturday are in line with those made Wednesday by another person familiar with the group's thinking.
That person, who attended a meeting of OPEC governors Wednesday in Vienna, said a consensus favoring an output decision in December, not this month, emerged from that meeting.
"All the countries agree. We will wait for December," that person said.
OPEC already agreed last month to cut its production by 1.5 million barrels a day. That cut followed another decision by OPEC in September to reduce output by around 500,000 barrels a day. Neither cut has reversed the nearly $100-a-barrel drop in oil prices since July.
Some OPEC nations, like Venezuela and Iran, are calling on OPEC to take speedy action again and reduce production by at least 1 million barrels a day.
OPEC is scheduled to meet formally Dec. 17 in Oran, Algeria.
OPEC ministers are also meeting this Saturday in Cairo, Egypt on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OAPEC, there.