DAVOS, Jan 24: The secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said on Friday he believed the world was not on the verge of an oil crisis but the threat of a US-led war on Iraq could change that.

“We are in a transitory situation and not on the edge of an oil crisis,” Alvaro Silva-Calderon told the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Asked what would happen to global oil prices if the United States launched military strikes against Iraq, Silva-Calderon said: “We don’t know. It’s out of our control.”

OPEC agreed on January 12 to increase oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in a bid to curb price surges triggered by a strike in Venezuela and the threat of war on Iraq, which has the second biggest known oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.—AFP