Oil prices held steady yesterday, planted firmly above $53 a barrel, after three Opec countries said they saw no need for the producers' cartel to increase output despite crude hovering near to four-month highs.
US light crude slipped 11 cents to $53.67 a barrel, $2 below last October's record $55.67, but more than 18 percent higher than a month ago.
Iran and Qatar lined up with Venezuela against boosting Opec production. The group's president on Sunday expressed concern over high prices but said the market was well supplied.
"Opec is concerned about this price development despite the fact that the market is well-supplied and global crude oil stocks have continued to build," Opec President and Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahd al-Sabah said in a statement.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries meets on March 16 in Iran to review production policy.
Ministers are usually wary of pumping more crude going into the second quarter, because demand traditionally falls as the northern hemisphere winter draws to a close.
But the latest price rally to near-record levels prompted Nigeria to say last Friday that Opec may discuss next week an output increase or a relaxation of official production limits.
Opec is already pumping above its limit of 27 million barrels per day (bpd) at about 27.63 million bpd in February, a Reuters survey showed last Friday.
Saudi Arabia accounted for a little more than three-quarters of the leakage above the formal ceiling, with production rising 190,000 bpd from January.
"The Saudis are the ones with the lion's share of the world's spare capacity, so what they want, essentially I think they will get," said David Thurtell, commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
"And I am still not convinced they (Saudi Arabia) are comfortable with oil above $50."
Speculators, who last week helped push prices to within 50 cents of October's record high, are counting on a further rise in prices and have extended their net long positions in the US crude futures market to the highest level since June 2004. Central bankers from top developing and industrial countries said after a weekend meeting that they are keeping a wary eye on climbing oil costs, despite an upbeat overall outlook for world economic growth.
US Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Sunday that energy prices were "way, way too high", but that the US economy had been robust enough to weather the impact on growth.
US economic policy makers are watching closely for any signs higher energy costs could contribute to rising inflation, but say that so far, there is no evidence of that.