Oil rose by more than $1 a gallon Thursday as oil traders believed they would see some sort of of a production cut at Friday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

At the preliminary 2:30 p.m. close in New York, oil rose $1.08 to $67.83 a barrel. The oil had traded as low as $65.90 earlier this morning.

The cartel commonly known as OPEC called an emergency meeting scheduled for Friday to discuss the rapid decline in the price of oil, which has fallen by more than half in six months. Oil analysts expect OPEC to cut production to keep oil prices from falling further.

“We are going to reduce,” OPEC President Chakib Khelil told reporters in Vienna, according to reports by Dow Jones and AFP. By how much, we don't know. This is something we are going to decide tomorrow.”

OPEC members said they are trying to decide how much to cut production without causing further harm to the global economy, which has taken a drastic downturn in recent months. News reports have said that several oil tankers have had trouble selling all of their oil at several world ports.

The problem facing OPEC is not all members of the cartel may follow the organization’s decree. The oil minister for Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest supplier of oil, did not express enthusiasm behind a production cut.

“Who said anything about a cut?” Ali al-Niami told reporters, according to Bloomberg News. Al-Niami said prices, not production, will be decided by the market.

Meanwhile, Venezuela petroleum minister Rafeal Ramirez said OPEC should make a “drastic” cut in the production of oil. Venezuela has the Western Hemisphere’s largest proven reserves of oil, but the vast majority of its oil, which is often referred to as “heavy sour” crude, cannot be refined by anyone except the United States.

Traders also got yesterday’s crude inventory report that showed a substantially higher 3.2 million barrel-increase last week, according to the Department of Energy. Analysts were not expecting such a high increase in inventories.

Other Commodity Markets 

The contract for November delivery of whole gasoline, often used a benchmark for the wholesale price of gas, was up 1 cent to $1.58 a gallon. 

Wholesale heating oil, a primary heating source for most of the northeast U.S., closed flat at $2.0405 a gallon.

Natural gas fell 34.8 cents to $6.429 per million British Thermal Units.

Gold declined $18.80 to $716.40 an ounce in New York Mercantile Exchange trading.