Article Last Updated: Tuesday, April 08, 2003 - 8:09:57 AM PST Oakland Tribune By Bruce Stanley, Associated Press

LONDON -- OPEC members plan an emergency meeting this month aimed at curbing runaway crude production to avert a possible price crash, a source at the producers' cartel said Monday.

Oil ministers at the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have agreed to meet April 24 in Vienna, Austria. The meeting will take place regarless of whether the war in Iraq has ended, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity from OPEC headquarters in the Austrian capital.

Most OPEC members have been producing at maximum capacity to keep world oil supplies plentiful during the war. However, oil ministers are increas- ingly worried that OPEC might be oversupplying the market just as demand starts falling to its seasonal low.

"There is some serious concern among some of the ministers that prices could be headed for a crash if they don't act quickly to stop the trend," the source said. "No one is talking about cutting production of course, but that would be the only feasible thing to do."

The group has decided not to wait until OPEC's benchmark price for oil falls below the group's minimum threshold of $22 a barrel.

"You don't wait for the crisis to happen. You act before," the source said.

Oil prices have fallen sharply since peaking at almost $40 a barrel on Feb. 27, before the outbreak of fighting in Iraq. May contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude fell to a low on Monday of $27.15 before bouncing more than a dollar on news of OPEC's planned meeting. U.S. crude for May delivery was trading at $28.12 by early afternoon in New York, still 50 cents lower than Friday's close.

In London, contracts of North Sea Brent crude for May delivery slipped as low as $23.40 a barrel before rebounding in the afternoon to $24.50, down 18 cents from Friday's close.

Only last month, OPEC signaled that it would pump more oil to make up for any supply disruption caused by hostilities in Iraq. Although members agreed in March to stick with their production target of 24.5 million barrels a day, some analysts say that rampant quota-busting has boosted OPEC's current output to around 27 million barrels a day.

Kevin Norrish, head of commodities research at Barclays Capital, said OPEC is right to be concerned about weak prices.

Saudi Arabia, the group's biggest member, has made "a massive increase" in output, while exports from Venezuela are growing steadily following the recent collapse there of a nationwide strike. Output in Nigeria is starting to recover from disruptions caused by social unrest, and Iraq will eventually resume production, Norrish said.

Demand typically falls in the second quarter due to declining sales of winter heating oil in the northern hemisphere. Demand for gasoline often doesn't pick up until the peak summer driving season.

This year, springtime demand is expected to fall more sharply than usual. With a wartime supply shortage looking unlikely, oil-importing countries will stop buying crude for their strategic reserves, Norrish said.

"I think OPEC is correct to identify the possibility of a sharp fall," he said. "They're being pre-emptive because once the market starts to get away from them it could be very difficult to bring it back."

If OPEC does nothing to cut production, Norrish predicts that U.S. crude futures will fall to $21.50 by June or July.

One item that won't be on the agenda for this month's meeting is how to reintegrate Iraq into OPEC's production-quota system. Iraq hasn't participated in the group's production agreements since the 1991 Gulf War because the United Nations has regulated its exports.

A postwar government in Iraq would almost certainly want to maximize crude exports to help pay for reconstruction. Such a policy would add further to global supplies unless other OPEC members, chiefly Saudi Arabia, agree to reduce their own quotas to make room for a resurgent Iraq.

This issue is potentially explosive, and the OPEC source said oil ministers have deferred trying to tackle it until at least June, when they plan to meet again in Doha, Qatar.

<a href=www.abs-cbnnews.com>ABS-CBNNews VANTAGE POINT By LUIS V. TEODORO  

  The next targets of U.S. regime change are likely to be Iran and Syria, but will include Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as other governments the US regards as actually or potentially hostile.  

World War IV has begun. Although the war is barely noticed by Filipinos, the Philippines is already part of it. The clearest indication of that involvement is the Philippines’ being part of the “Coalition of the Willing.” The less obvious signs are the bombings in Davao, the Balikatan “exercises” and the return of the U.S. military bases.

WW I lasted from 1914 to 1918, WW II from 1939 to 1945. The entire world was in WW III from 1945 to 1990, though much of it didn’t know it. The longest world war yet, WW III was also known as the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet union, though several times coming close to a nuclear exchange, fought several wars by proxy: in Korea and Vietnam, for example, and finally in Afghanistan in the 1980s. (The war in Afghanistan, which resulted in the USSR's withdrawal, was among the reasons why the USSR and the entire Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1990.)

The characterization of the Cold War as WW III comes from James Woolsey, who was director of the US Central Intelligence Agency during the Bill Clinton presidency. If he’s right, the next world war will be the first in the 21st century, but the fourth since 1914.

Woolsey says WW IV -- a war supposedly against terrorism and oppressive regimes, but in truth a war for US global dominance -- began with the US invasion of Iraq.

Woolsey doesn’t use the word “invasion,” since like all U.S. hawks he believes that the United States attacked Iraq to “liberate” the Iraqis. But he did suggest in a speech at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the first week of April that, once the US has removed Sad- dam Hussein, Iraq will be the base from which it will remake the Middle East.

The next targets of U.S. regime change are likely to be Iran and Syria, but will include Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- US allies the United States believes have be- come too erratic to depend upon -- as well as other governments the U.S. regards as actually or potentially hostile. These are, among others, Libya, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and China.

The means to wage “war” against these countries, says U.S. author Richard Bennett, will be diplomatic and economic pressure, propaganda campaigns and espionage, “but if all else fails, [will include] military action . . . up to and including full-scale war.”

It’s all in keeping with the Bush doctrine to remake the world to America’s liking (a prerogative that once belonged only to God and the sovereign peoples of each nation).

The campaign is couched in terms like “bringing democracy” to various countries and “liberating” them from oppressive regimes, but it’s actually meant to assure total US global dominance in land, sea, air and, eventually, space.

“As we [the U.S.] move toward a new Middle East . . . over the decades to come, we will make a lot of people nervous,” Woolsey said in his UCLA speech. Addressing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak -- whose government has been appeasing the US by arresting and torturing anti-U.S. demonstrators in the last few weeks -- and the Saudi Arabian royal family (with which the Bush family has had close business ties), Woolsey said, “we [the U.S.] want you nervous.

“We want you to realize that now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you, the Mubaraks and the Saudi royal family most fear: we’re on the side of your own people.”

That the U.S. will be -- it has never been -- on the side of the people suffering under oppressive regimes (which in most cases it either put in power or sustains) anywhere is of course mostly myth, the U.S. being on the side of the U.S. and its economic and strategic interests.

But besides pointedly suggesting that past friendships and even canine devotion are of no consequence to the current U.S. rulers, Woolsey’s warning does suggest that the U.S. did not invade Iraq just to oust Saddam Hussein, but to seize control of Iraqi oil, establish a permanent military presence in the Middle East, and remake the entire region.

The plan is all there in black and white -- in the September 2000 report of the Project for a New American Century (“Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century”), which had for members U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. (PNAC claims to be a “nonprofit, educational organization whose goal is to promote American global leadership.”)

To maintain U.S. global “preeminence” (read: total dominance), the report envisions a Pax Americana in which the United States would have global dominance “precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with U.S. principles and interests.” The U.S., urges the report, must have the capability to fight “multi-theater wars” to extend U.S. power throughout the planet.

The invasion of Iraq began the process. Neither Saddam Hussein nor his “weapons of mass destruction,” or his being a dictator, the PNAC Report makes clear, is really the issue.

The report speaks of “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf . . . [which] transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The report admits that what is envisioned is for the U.S. “to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security.”

To achieve this, “the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification” for moving U.S. forces into the region.

Where does the Philippines figure in this grand design for a war that’s likely to last for decades, perhaps for much of this century?

The United States has been establishing military bases all over the world in the last two years, in compliance with one of the report’s major recommendations: that the US shift “permanently based [military] forces to Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia” (where the Philippines is located) so US troops can be quickly deployed in the event of war with the regimes (in Asia, North Korea and China particularly) the Bush coterie abhors.

Once host to U.S. bases, the Philippines since 2001 has opened its territory to U.S. forces, and allowed the construction of “temporary” facilities for them. The Balikatan exercises and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, which assure U.S. troops a presence in the Philippines that’s likely to become permanent over time, are thus part of U.S. preparations for the wars that, following the PNAC Report, it is likely to wage.

The bombings in Davao have achieved two things. They have demonized the Muslim groups and justified repression as well as the use of U.S. troops in “training” their Philippine counterparts. In this context, the escalating violence in that long-suffering region is as much a part of World War IV as the U.S. attack on Iraq.

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LUIS TEODORO/TODAY

<a href=www.business.scotsman.com>business.scotsman.com

OIL prices remained in a downward trend today as United States forces continued to pound targets in Baghdad, bolstering speculation of a swift end to the war.

But analysts said a call by the head of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) for the producers’ cartel to meet in a little over two weeks could help limit the slump in the price of oil, which has fallen as much as ten per cent since the war began 20 days ago.

US light crude, which has fallen more than 30 per cent since it peaked at $40 a barrel in February, slide a further 1.4 per cent to $27.56 a barrel this morning. London’s Brent crude dipped to $24 a barrel, bringing losses to ten per cent since the start of the war.

Traders believe a short-lived war may mean minimum damage to Iraq’s oil infrastructure, allowing Iraq, normally the world’s seventh biggest exporter, to restore production relatively quickly.

Oil prices have also come under selling pressure as recent figures on the US economy have raised concerns it may be heading into recession, which would choke demand for petrol.

Sweeping cuts to air traffic because of Middle East hostilities and the deadly flu-like Sars virus in Asia have sharply dented requirements for jet fuel, at a time when oil demand traditionally declines at the end of winter.

Worried by the steep price falls, Opec president Abdullah al-Attiyah said he had proposed an emergency meeting of the producers’ group to consider steps to counter a looming glut.

Ministers from Opec countries were next scheduled to meet on June 11 in the Qatar capital, Doha, but Mr Attiyah, who is also Qatar’s oil minister, proposed the group should meet on April 24.

Oil analyst David Thurtell, of Commonwealth Bank in Sydney, said: "Opec is being proactive, using their usual manner of up by the stairs and down by the lift.

When prices are heading up, they act cautiously and slowly, but on the way down they will act decisively. I imagine they will try and cut back at least some of the increase they made for Venezuela."

Theage.com.ve April 9 2003 By Sri Jegarajah Singapore

Crude oil fell as much as 2.3 per cent in New York as US-led forces neared victory in Iraq, spurring concern that a resumption in exports from the Middle East oil producer could lead to a second-quarter global surplus.

"The market is facing a glut, not a shortage," OPEC president Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said in Paris. The group will meet on April 24 to discuss a cut in output to stem any plunge in prices below OPEC's $US25 a barrel target.

Prices are more than a quarter lower than a month ago as coalition troops tighten their control over Baghdad amid reports that Iraq's leader Saddam Hussein and his sons may have been killed in a bomb attack in the city.

"The war will be over soon. That's positive, but markets are now looking beyond Iraq," said Tetsu Emori, a commodity strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo. "OPEC may have to cut output because demand in the second quarter is down."

Crude oil for May delivery fell as much as US65¢ to $US27.31 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. On Monday, oil fell US66¢ to $US27.96 a barrel. Prices have tumbled 30 per cent from a 12-year high of $US39.99 a barrel on February 27.

In Iraq, coalition forces now control 900 of the 950 oil wells in the southern Rumaila oilfield, the country's largest. Iraq produced an average of 2.48 million barrels of oil a day in February, about 3 per cent of world output.

"With the war news as positive as it is, if it weren't for the OPEC announcement we probably would have been down another dollar on the crude oil," said Chris Mennis, owner of New Wave Energy, a trader of oil swaps and oil products in California. "It probably kept prices from collapsing."

Oil rallied briefly on Monday after OPEC said it would hold the special meeting on April 24.

OPEC might consider a "maximum" output cut of 1 million barrels a day, Mr Emori said. A cut of 2 million barrels a day might inflate the price of oil, damaging economic growth in key oil consuming countries including the US, he said.

Oil output from OPEC rose in March to the highest level in 11/2 years, as increases in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia made up for a drop in Iraqi supply.

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