October 04, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 21, 1428

RIYADH, Oct 3: Saudi Arabia will host the third summit of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) from Nov 17 in Riyadh, for which King Abdullah has already sent invitations to heads of member states.

The first summit was held in 1975 in Algeria and the second in 2000 in Venezuela.

Opec members include Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Angola, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

The agenda of the two-day summit will not only focus on energy markets and related issues, but also environmental protection topics.

Saudi oil minister Ali Al-Naimi said “embracing” this summit “confirms that the Kingdom remains committed to stability in world oil markets.

“It also affirms the kingdom’s devotion to stability in the world petroleum markets to serve interests of the producing and consuming countries, the petroleum industry and the global economy, especially economies of developing countries.”

In order to stabilise crude markets the Opec had last month agreed to increase its output by 500,000 barrels per day from Nov 1.

Opec crude production in September was also higher than the previous month, a Reuters survey showed earlier the week.

Ten Opec members bound by output targets, all except Iraq and Angola, pumped 26.8 million barrels per day, up 60,000 bpd from August, according to the survey of oil firms, traders, Opec officials and analysts.

The majority of the increase came from the world’s biggest exporter Saudi Arabia.

Total Opec output rose to 30.62 million bpd from 30.37 million bpd in August as Iraq and Angola also boosted their supplies, the survey said.