Brussels, 19/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - Loyola de Palacio, Energy Commissioner, will be in Amsterdam for the ninth International Energy Forum to be held from 22 to 24 May, and which brings together oil producers and consumers. Ms de Palacio will urge producer countries to increase their production in order to counter the rise in crude oil prices per barrel, which have reached very high levels in recent months. "There is an urgent need to step up the quantity of oil produced", she said on Wednesday cited by Reuters. She went on to add: "This is a question of credibility for OPEC (Ed. Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries). If it does not do so, OPEC will have shown that it does not consider price stability important". On Wednesday, Ms de Palacio presented a memo to the College along these lines.
Since Madrid, the Spanish Economy Minister, Pedro Solbes, former European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, also expressed concern about the rise in oil prices, Reuters said. "A temporary rise has a very limited impact but a rise that lasts could end up affecting growth and this is what worries us", he said.