Friday 25 April 2003 OPEC cuts  | After a meeting in Vienna, the oil producers' organisation OPEC has announced that it will cut production by about two million barrels a day. This report from Andrew Walker: |
 Listen to the story The group came to this meeting fearing that prices would continue their recent sharp decline. Their remedy is a cut in production to curtail the extent to which the members are exceeding their agreed quotas, something they have been doing in order to prevent shortages arising as a result of the war in Iraq.
But the complex agreement involves an increase in formal output quotas in an attempt to bring actual production in line with what they have agreed. One analyst said that the picture underlying this agreement is that the group is in effectparcelling out the market share of Iraq to the other ten member countries.
OPEC officials say they are expecting Iraqi production to be in effect zero for the time being. They also say that they hope that Iraq will come back into the market soon. What they don't say is that if it does, it could create a painful dilemma for the group's other members: either accept a lower price or give up those additional production quotas they have just given themselves.
Andrew Walker, BBC News, Vienna
Listen to the words sharp decline sudden very big fall remedy cure; successful way of dealing with a problem cut reduction curtail reduce; restrict quotas stated amounts; the required quantities to be produced in line with following; to be the same as in effect to summarise; it is more or less true to say; in effect is added to a statement to indicate that it is a general summary of a situation parcelling out dividing into parts in order to share the market share the share of the total sales dilemma a difficult choice to be made between different courses of action  Read more about this story | |  | | | SEARCH IN LEARNING ENGLISH | | | |
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