Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries continued to take advantage of crude prices around $70 a barrel in September, leaking more oil to the market for a sixth consecutive month, a survey by Dow Jones Newswires showed Thursday.
The survey estimates daily production in September by the group's 11 quota-bound members rose 0.29%, or 75,000 barrels a day, to 26.405 million barrels a day against a revised 26.33 million in August.
The survey shows that the OPEC-11 last month pumped about 1.56 million barrels a day above their production target of 24.845 million barrels a day set late last year after a series of production cuts.
The group left its output quota unchanged at a meeting on Sept. 9 in Vienna as prices continued to hover around the $70 a barrel mark amid expectations that energy demand will increase as world economic conditions are improving.
"At the magic number of $70 a barrel everyone now wants a piece of the sweet oil cake," said Kamel Al Harami, a Kuwait-based independent oil analyst. "Also, there is an atmosphere of optimism that crude prices will remain at about $70 dollars till the end of the year; there's optimism that the global economy is recovering."
The front-month November light, sweet, crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was trading $0.77 lower at $69.84 a barrel at 1230 GMT Thursday.