OPEC curtails oil output by 1.5 million barrels per day

As expected, the organization of Petroleum exporting countries – OPEC – decided in an emergency meeting Friday in Vienna to lessen its oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day prompting crude prices on the volatile world market to go downhill.

• OPEC was expected by analysts to cut its daily output by at least one million barrels per day amid a worsening global economic meltdown marked by a lower demand for energy.
• The OPEC move is essentially aimed at shoring up dwindling crude prices despite a hovering worldwide recession.
• As a result, Brent North Sea crude price plunged to 62 dollars per barrel today for the first time since March 2007.
• OPEC chairman, Algerian Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil told reporters that the organization’s output reduction would not have any repercussions on inflation or economic growth.
• In a discordant note, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had affirmed ahead of OPEC’s Vienna gathering that any curtailment made in a bid to ramp up oil prices would be “scandalous”, as he put it, at a time when major world powers, including Britain and the United States, are on the verge on an economic downturn.