Venezuela, Nigeria to cut oil production

OPEC, seeking to stem a two-month slide in oil prices, said yesterday Venezuela and Nigeria would cut crude production by a combined 170,000 barrels a day.

Venezuela, the fourth-biggest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, will reduce output by 50,000 barrels a day from Oct. 1, and Nigeria will cut production by 120,000 barrels a day from the same date, spokesman Omar Farouk Ibrahim said.

Crude prices in New York have slid 20 percent since touching a record $78.40 a barrel on July 14 as fuel stockpiles climbed and the risk of the United Nations imposing sanctions on Iran eased. The reduction would represent less than 1 percent of OPEC's daily output last month.

Yesterday, light sweet crude for November delivery rose 15 cents to $62.91 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London, November Brent crude futures slid 6 cents to settle at $62.48 a barrel.

``The number itself is not so much," Kenichiro Yamaguchi, chief operating officer for Petro Diamond Risk Management Ltd., said by phone from London. OPEC wanted the market ``to see that there is concrete action."

Venezuelan Energy and Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said his country decided to cut output to stem a drop in prices that has shaved $8 a barrel this month from the price of the country's crude market basket.

Ramirez said that there is a surplus of at least 500,000 barrels a day in the market.

OPEC President Edmund Daukoru, who is also Nigeria's oil minister, is in talks with other member-countries about crude prices, which touched a six-month low on Sept. 25, Ibrahim said.

The group, which pumps 40 percent of the world's crude, agreed at a meeting on Sept. 11 to leave a production quota for 10 of its members unchanged at 28 million barrels a day. Since then, the group's basket oil price has dropped to $55.90 a barrel from $60.89.