OPEC meeting participant says oil ministers have decided to keep output targets steady

OPEC insider: no change in output

VIENNA — A delegation member at an OPEC oil ministers’ meeting says the gathering has agreed to keep output targets unchanged.

OPEC has left its members’ production quotas unchanged since December 2008, when it announced the last of a series of cuts aimed at bringing their output down by 4.2 million barrels per day. The cuts helped engineer a rebound in crude prices, which had collapsed to the low $30s from a mid-2008 high of almost $150 per barrel.

The delegation member spoke on condition of anonymity before the formal announcement later Wednesday. He said members also were asked to curb overproduction, now at nearly 2 million barrels a day.

With that overproduction, OPEC now is pumping about 27 million barrels a day.