VIENNA, June 21: The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries appeared unruffled on Thursday in the face of possible US legal action against its members on grounds of price manipulation.

“We have to wait and see,” Opec Secretary General Abdulla al-Badri said of a draft law approved by the US Senate.

The proposal would allow the US government to take the members of the Opec oil producers' group to court on charges of price fixing.

“If the aim is to reduce prices, it won't,” Badri told journalists at the start of a meeting here of Opec and European Union officials.

Opponents of the proposed law fear it could prompt Opec to shut down production to protest such initiatives.

The Senate draft, to be included in a new overall energy bill, is similar to an earlier initiative that failed to get off the ground in 2005, when there was likewise an effort to forge a comprehensive energy law.

A draft law approved last year by the House of Representatives judiciary committee would empower the US Federal Trade Commission to take legal action against oil companies suspected of overcharging and would open the way to anti-trust suits against Opec countries deemed to have been implicated in excessive pricing policies.US gasoline (petrol) prices are close to a record three dollars a gallon, an issue that looms large in the current US presidential campaign.—AFP