Reports suggest minimal damage to Libya's oil production

OPEC Secretary General Abdalla el-Badri said October 11 there appeared to have been minimal damage to Libya's oil production facilities and discounted a recent news agency report saying that the Elephant field was in ruins.

"The information we are receiving [is that there has been] not much damage to production facilities," he said.

"Eni said that field is OK, so that report was not really correct," he said, referring to remarks last week from Paolo Scaroni, chief executive of Italy's Eni, which has a 33.3% stake in the field, who said the field had not suffered any damage.

Looking ahead to OPEC's next meeting on December 14, Badri said he expected ministers to reach a "positive" conclusion.

OPEC failed to reach an agreement on production levels at its most recent meeting on June 8 after Iran and several other member countries blocked a proposal from OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia to boost actual output, estimated at 28.8 million b/d for April, by 1.5 million b/d.

But Badri downplayed the failure to agree production policy in June, noting that "many meetings ended without result" in the past and insisting that the case for increasing output in the second half of the year had come from OPEC's Vienna secretariat rather than from Saudi Arabia.

"That debate in June was really about secretariat work. We [needed] a 1.5 million b/d addition. It wasn't just Saudi," Badri said.

"Some countries agreed, some countries did not agree. And there was a lot of uncertainty in our forecast. We did not reach agreement. It was not the end of the world," he said.

"In December we will come back. I am sure we will reach a positive ending," he said.

OPEC has boosted production through the current year alongside rising prices and the loss of Libyan production as a result of the uprising against Qadhafi's regime.

However, a Platts survey of OPEC and oil industry officials and analysts October 10 showed that output from the oil producer club fell by 130,000 b/d to 30 million b/d.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors regard OPEC's previous 24.845 million b/d target as defunct but Iran called as recently as October 10 for that target, which covers 11 members but not quota-exempt Iraq, to be retained at the group's next meeting on December 14.

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