OPEC to Leave Production Steady

OPEC on Wednesday trimmed its forecast for global growth in oil demand in 2013, becoming the second of the world’s closely watched oil forecasters this week to predict weaker consumption. The move by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in a monthly report follows a similar downward revision to oil demand growth in 2013 by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday.

The OPEC oil cartel will likely hold output steady at its one-day meeting in Vienna this week, Ecuadorian minister Wilson Pastor-Morris said on Wednesday."The quotas will be maintained. No changes are foreseen," Pastor-Morris told reporters at his hotel in the Austrian capital.He also predicted that oil prices, which have been trading in a range of 70-80 dollars per barrel this year, would "hold steady" at those levels.

AFP - The OPEC oi

OPEC will probably keep its output quota unchanged for a second successive meeting next week as members judge prices high enough to cover their spending needs, according to a Bloomberg survey.

Vahan Janjigian (Forbes) submits: A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms to control the price and supply of a particular good or service. In order to promote competition, U.S. companies are prohibited from forming cartels.