OPEC's decision to slash its daily oil output by 1.5 million barrels from Nov. 1 will not hurt the global economy, already teetering on the brink of recession, the oil cartel's president Chakib Khelil said on Friday. Speaking after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to cut output to help stabilize free-falling prices, Khelil insisted that the move would not push the world economy into recession. “There won't be any impact on inflation, there's not going to be any impact on growth,” Khelil told a news conference after an emergency meeting here. “Growth has disppeared already in the US, it's disappeared in Europe. It's not going to be affected by changes in oil price at levels we're talking about.” The global economy had withstood oil prices of $140and more until recently. “So they are being helped by levels of oil prices at 60 dollars,” Khelil said. The global financial crisis and looming recession had not been sparked by oil prices, but by economic mismanagement of governments, he said. The current situation “did not have anything to do with oil prices. It has to do with mismanagement of the economies, with the subprime crisis, with the consequences of that crisis, not only on the world economy but also on the oil sector,” Khelil argued. “We don't believe that fluctuations of the oil price at this stage will have any effect. In fact, inflation is going down and growth ... isn't dependent necessarily on the oil price.” If oil buyers “aren't going to be able to get credit from the banks, they're not going to be able to even buy the crude. So you have both a lack of demand, of real demand, but you also have consequences of the financial situation on buyers,” Khelil said. A statement issued by OPEC after the meeting urged non-OPEC members to join it in cutting output to stabilize plunging oil prices. OPEC “cannot be expected to bear alone the burden of restoring equilibrium,” the statement said. The following are the cuts agreed by countries in terms of barrels per day: Algeria 71,000, Angola 99,000, Ecuador 27,000, Iran 199,000, Kuwait 132,000, Libya 89,000, Nigeria 113,000, Qatar 43,000, Saudi Arabia 466,000, UAE 134,000, and Venezuela 129,000.
