Energy ministers from OPEC and Russia hold informal talks in Istanbul

Energy ministers from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Venezuela and Russia began informal closed-door talks with the secretary general of OPEC in Istanbul on Wednesday as they try to coordinate efforts to rebalance the oil market.

OPEC officials are holding a flurry of meetings in coming weeks to nail down an agreement reached in Algiers last month on modest output cuts, the first such deal since 2008, for which they are seeking cooperation from non-OPEC producers.

The ministers were meeting on the sidelines of the World Energy Congress in Istanbul. No decision is expected from Wednesday's talks.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal, Ron Bousso, Parisa Hafezi and Olesya Astakhova; Writing by Nick Tattersall)