Business

OPEC decides leave oil output unchanged

March 18, 2010

OPEC oil ministers have agreed to keep their output targets unchanged.

The decision comes at the end of a meeting of the 12-nation Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

OPEC has left its members' production quotas unchanged since December 2008, when it announced the last of a series of cuts aimed at bringing their output down by 4.2 million barrels per day. The cuts helped engineer a rebound in crude prices, which had collapsed fallen into the low $30s from a mid-2008 high of almost $150 per barrel.

A statement at the end of the meeting on Wednesday said members also reiterated their commitment to honouring individual production quotas. Overproduction is now at nearly 2 million barrels a day.

With that overproduction, OPEC now pumps about 27 million barrels a day.

AP

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