OPEC head predicts more oil price hikes

Khelil says supply is not the problem

by Dave Hannon -- Purchasing, 7/9/2008 12:08:00 PM

“The price of oil will rise again in the coming weeks,” according to Chakib Khelil, the Algerian energy minister and currently president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC.

In various news reports, Khelil said crude oil prices have surged mostly because the “U.S. Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to boost the American economy, which weakened the dollar” and not because there is a problem with supply and demand.

“As producer countries we think that the current supply is sufficient, that this balance in supply is in everybody's interests and that it shouldn't be disturbed, because the current rise in oil prices is in nobody's interest,” he said, according to AFP news service.

AFP also reports that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the world's number one oil exporter, called on consumer countries to get used to high prices in comments published on Tuesday. "Consumer countries have to adapt to the prices and the mechanisms of the market," the king said in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper.