OPEC not to hike oil output

The oil price could peak at $150-170 in the next three months and then retreat quickly by the end of the year, a Commerzbank analyst said on Wednesday.

Oil should come back down to under $100 in 2009 but the days of $40 or $50 a barrel are long gone, senior commodity analyst Eugen Weinberg told journalists in Frankfurt.

OPEC's president Chakib Khelil, the energy minister of Algeria on Thursday ruled out an increase in production by the oil-exporting group despite record crude prices.

OPEC oil exports, excluding Angola and Ecuador, will jump to their highest rate this year in the four weeks to June 28, an analyst who tracks future flows said on

Thursday.

Seaborne crude oil exports from 11 OPEC members, including Iraq, will rise to 24.85 million bpd, up 390,000 bpd from 24.46 million bpd to May 31, British consultancy Oil Movements said in its latest estimate.

"It's going up month on month. This is the high for the year," Roy Mason of Oil Movements said. Mason added that he revised down last week's estimate, which he said then was the highest in 2008. The boost in shipments from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is expected to meet a seasonal rise in demand and halts a period of decline in sailings to the west.

"The upward movement of eastbound sailings has leveled off and the downward movement westbound has stopped," Mason said. The rise in OPEC exports from lows in mid-May echoes figures cited by other analysts and some producing countries.

Oil exports from Iran, OPEC's second-biggest producer, will rise by 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) to at least 2.5 million bpd this month and next, a top Iranian official said on Wednesday. Refinery maintenance had slowed Iran's oil sales during April and May to about 2.2 million bpd and much of the unsold crude was stored on vessels off Iran's shores.