OPEC Secretary-general To Visit Moscow

Ali Rodriguez, OPEC Secretary-General, intends to visit Moscow quite soon--possibly, within December's initial ten days, say officers on the Vienna headquarters of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Mr. Rodriguez did not have the visit on his schedule, which he urgently changed after Russia determined to reduce its oil exports by a mere 50,000 barrels a day, while the OPEC had appealed to Russia, Mexico, Norway and Oman--the world's largest independent oil-extracting countries--to bring cuts in oil exports to a daily total of 500,000 barrels. Norway and Mexico met the OPEC halfway to appoint extraction and crude petroleum export cuts at a respective 200,000 and 100,000 barrels. Oman has not yet announced a final decision after it gave a tentative accord for certain reductions. The office of the OPEC Secretary-General does not think Russian cuts are enough to stabilise petroleum prices in the world raw material markets. Meanwhile, many Western experts deem them sufficient to implement resolutions of the 118th OPEC conference, considering Norwegian, Mexican and Omani reductions. The recent extraordinary Vienna conference of OPEC countries' Energy and Petroleum Industry ministers demanded oil extraction and export quotas reduced by a daily 1.5 million barrels, as of January 1, 2002.