欧佩克不增产 国际油价再上升

Well, this is the case, you know, where you have …eh… geopolitics and oil mixing. It's gonna probably force the hand of the OPEC members. This persistent rise of crude above $100 a barrel on the front half of the year, is putting pressure on these ministers to take action. They have a quota right now. They've been living with this December 2008 of 24.8 million barrels a day. Their actual production's close to 26.3. So the market expectations are... look, at least it announce where you are today and please give us a signal if in fact more oil's gonna come on the market if necessary. We can’t forget the backdrop of Libyan war and that production of 1.6 million barrels a day, off the market bar 200,000 barrels, that's been filled by Saudi Arabia. But the signals are important, more than anything else right now.

Are you getting a feeling that in terms of the concrete bases they are actually going to raise output?

Eh, output, no, Nina, I think it's gonna be primarily the quota. But I think we should also point out that OPEC acts very well under pressure. But the number of new faces here of the twelve ministers around the table, six are new and half of those are not even ministers. So we have a Libya representative in the midst of war right now, the former power electricity person sitting across the table. And across from him, by the UAE minister and the Qatari minister who are opposing the current government of Muammar Gaddafi, so you can see the tensions here right now. They would like to walk away kind of building confidence on the quota system that the market finds realistic. And this 20% premium we've seen because of the uprisings in the Middle East, they are very aware of. So they want to send the right signals, not to drive oil prices too high, or it …eh… dampens demand in the second half of 2011.

John, we've got Libyan war, we've also got Iran without an oil minister, what are the political dynamics that play here at OPEC this time?

Well, it is the most challenging meeting I would say in the better part of a decade if you think about it, Nina. But you don't forget here in the backdrop, the Secretary General is from Libya himself, he wants to walk away here with a very moderate agreement, not talking about the politics if it can be avoided it. And the Saudi heavyweight Mr. Ali Naimi, has been in this structure for 16 years. And when there has been a crisis, Saudi Arabia has stepped up to provide more oil. Another thing we should watch out for, will Saudi produce 9 million barrels a day or more in the second half of the year.  And again that's a strong signal that Saudi could send if not explicitly touching a number.

force sb's hand

to make sb do sth that they do not want to do or make them do it sooner than they had intended