OPEC Sees No Need to Meeting

OPEC sees no need at present to hold an emergency meeting to discuss raising its oil output, an OPEC delegate said on Wednesday following informal consultations among members.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has been talking about whether it needed to meet due to rising prices and the loss of Libyan supplies. It believes that supply is adequate, the delegate said.

"There have been consultations and we don't see a need to meet at the moment," the delegate said.

Brent crude oil rose on Wednesday, rising 79 cents to $113.85 a barrel as of 1008 GMT. Oil prices had fallen on Tuesday after Kuwait's oil minister said OPEC was in talks about boosting supplies and holding an early meeting.

OPEC's next scheduled meeting to review its output policy is in June. Its Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri has been speaking to member countries to find out if they believed an earlier meeting was warranted.

The fighting in Libya has shut down about two-thirds of the oil output in Africa's third-largest producer. The OPEC member normally pumps 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of high-quality oil, or about 2 percent of world output.

While OPEC has not changed its formal output policy for more than two years, it has been boosting actual supply for months in response to rising oil prices and demand.

Top world exporter Saudi Arabia has offered extra supplies to replace lost Libyan barrels and said on Tuesday it had developed a "special mix" of crude close in quality to the supplies lost.

Oil traders and analysts have been sceptical that Saudi Arabia was able to pump enough oil of similar quality to Libya's high-quality crude supplies.

Saudi Arabia has raised its output to 9 million barrels per day (bpd) and some other OPEC members, such as Nigeria, are expected to provide smaller increases in coming weeks.