Opec fails to agree new oil production ceiling

[VIENNA] Opec failed to agree a new oil production ceiling at a meeting Thursday, its secretary general said, meaning the cartel's crude will continue to flow without formal constraints.

"To come up with a number is very difficult to do," Opec secretary general Abdalla El-Badri said in Vienna.

"But at this time now the number that we are producing is reasonable to the market, the market is accepting it, prices are moving," he told a news conference.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps around a third of the world's oil, abandoned in December its output target of 30 million barrels per day (bpd).

This target was in any case widely flouted, with total production by the 13-nation group around 32 million bpd.

Iran, returning to the oil market after the lifting of sanctions, was opposed to a new target, preferring instead to impose quotas on individual Opec members.

AFP