PARIS, April 15: Opec president Abdallah Ben Hamad Al Attiya, in Paris for the fourth international summit on petroleum and gas, has declared that the biggest task ahead for him this year will be stabilizing the oil markets, which, he admits “presently suffer from an overproduction of 2 million barrels a day.”

Interviewed in Tuesday’s issue of Le Figaro Economie, Mr Al Attiya, who is also Qatar’s oil minister, notes that “during the Iraqi crisis, Opec showed its professionalism by avoiding a dearth of petroleum on the markets, thus not permitting prices to rise as otherwise they might have, and this by putting an additional 2 million barrels a day on the pre-war market. “Let’s not forget how certain petroleum industry analysts had forecast a price of $100 per barrel, if Opec did nothing.”

Mr Al Attiya now expects some form of reciprocation from the oil markets, indeed Iraq, which, he hopes, will continue to remain a member of Opec reminding the country’s new administrators that “Opec may be an international organization, but it’s not political.” He also hopes that “Iraq will soon return to its pre-Gulf war quota.”

With the spectre of an oversupply of oil on the markets, the Opec chief says he is calling a ministerial level summit for either later this month or early May, and this, he notes “to avoid the errors of the past, where we didn’t react rapidly enough, and where, as a result, prices dropped under 10 dollars a barrel.”

To maintain a stable market, that is, prices at approximately $25 per barrel, he proposes that Opec member countries accept to pump 500,000 fewer barrels a day, “which would prove sufficient as long as Iraq continues to interrupt its exports of oil until the third quarter (of 2003).”