Opec has not formally set a firm oil price floor that it intends to defend, the group's president said this morning.
"Opec does not have a floor . . . but we know when prices have fallen," Edmund Daukoru, who is also Nigeria's senior oil official, told a forum in South Korea. He declined to comment on how prices may move next year.
Opec has not officially set a new price band or target since abandoning its $22-$28 range three years ago, although price hawks Iran and Venezuela last week both indicated that the group would no longer tolerate prices below $60 a barrel.
The group last month agreed to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day - its first formal output curbs since 2004 - to halt a slump in prices from a mid-July US record of $78.40 to less than $57 two weeks ago.
Some analysts took that as an indication that it was seeking to defend prices at $55-$60 a barrel.
Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said last week that Opec's strategy was to maintain at least $60 a barrel, and that it may need to cut another 300,000 barrels per day in December.
Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh said that a price below $60 was unacceptable due to the rising cost of production.