By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kuwait's energy minister, Sheik Ahmed Fahd Al Ahmed Al Sabah, said oil prices should begin to fall next month, assuming that OPEC - which pumps about a third of the world's oil - maintains output at current levels and geopolitical tensions do not worsen.
OPEC oil ministers, most resolved not to cut production levels amid stubbornly high prices, focused Tuesday on political instability, terrorist threats and other factors shaking confidence in the world's crude markets.
With consensus building among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries not to lower production, and with prices hovering above US$62 a barrel, the 11-nation group planned to assess "the influence of new political issues on the oil market," Qatar's oil minister, Abdullah bin Hamad al Attiyah, said before Wednesday's meeting in Vienna.