OPEC'S OIL-PRODUCTION 'BOOST' A MYTH: ANALYSTS Monday,September 11,2000 By KATE PERROTTA

Don't get too pumped up over OPEC's bumped-up oil production, analysts say. While the organization of oil-rich nations officially agreed yesterday to boost production by 800,000 barrels a day - or 3 percent more than usual - they have been unofficially pumping most of that amount already.

That likely spells status quo as far as prices go for consumers, experts said.

"This agreement is doing nothing for U.S. consumers, nor could it have been expected to, given the tightness in the home heating-oil market in the U.S. and the refineries' lack of capacity," said Leo Drollas, chief economist of the London-based Center for Global Energy Studies.

The U.S. government seemed a bit more hopeful.

"Whether such an increase will stabilize the market remains to be seen," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said. "Nonetheless, this expected production increase will bring needed additional oil into world markets."

Meanwhile, OPEC leaders, pressured by the international community to help rein in soaring energy prices, hailed the move as the right amount at the right time.

The new production quotas take effect Oct. 1.

"It will improve and moderate the price," predicted Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi, "and if it doesn't, we have a mechanism to trigger some more."

Kuwaiti oil minister Sheik Saud Nasser Sabah called the amount of the increase "a fair figure which satisfies everybody."

"We'll have to wait and see how the market reacts. We don't know. It's very unpredictable," Sabah said.

OPEC currently pumps out 25.4 millions barrels of crude oil a day.

Its pledge to boost production came on the heels of an economic forum of Pacific Rim nations in Brunei, where worried world leaders griped that exorbitant oil prices were threatening their economies.

European leaders have also been in a tight spot over rising oil prices.

In France, irate truckers and taxi drivers paralyzed parts of the country this past week by mounting massive protests over soaring gas prices, while drivers in Germany and Belgium and farmers in Britain have mounted similar disruptive demonstrations.

http://www.nypostonline.com/news/38191.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 11, 2000