'OPEC won't use oil as a weapon in any Iraq war'

'OPEC won't use oil as a weapon in any Iraq war'

The OPEC oil producers' group "won't use oil as a weapon" if war breaks out in Iraq and could increase production to offset price increases, the organization's Secretary General Alvaro Silva Calderon said here on Thursday.

"We have around four million barrels per day of spare capacity. We are ready to put this amount on the market if necessary," Calderon said, in a bid to calm concern that a possible Iraq war would send crude prices spiraling.

"We won't use oil as a weapon," he said. "We manage oil in the economic field, as an economic fact not as a weapon of war."

Calderon was speaking after the price of crude rose to a post- Gulf War high in New York, and London's Brent crude surged 42 U.S. cents to US$33.49 a barrel on Thursday.

OPEC's failure to keep the price of crude within the organization's $28 upper band did not reflect members' inability to meet demand, Calderon said. "It's not a problem of producing more oil, it's a problem of speculation." -- AFP