No immediate boost to Saudi oil production

Updated June 23, 2008 14:42:53

Australia's Energy Minister Martin Ferguson addressed the meeting, but didn't call for an increase to oil production. [ABC]

Saudi Arabia says there's enough crude oil to last for many decades to come, but there'll be no immediate boost to oil production.

Our Middle East correspondent, Ben Knight, reports from the Jeddah Energy Meeting in Saudi Arabia that King Abdullah called this meeting of world oil ministers and executives to find ways of stabilising the world oil price - and there were high high hopes among consumer nations that he would announce a boost in production.

That hasn't happened, although the Saudis say they're prepared to increase production if the market demands it.

Instead, the meeting has produced a raft of long term strategies like increasing investment in production, and closer scrutiny of oil trading.

Australian push

Australia's Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, addressed the meeting, but made no mention of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's threat to apply 'the blowtorch' to OPEC over oil production.

Mr Ferguson says he hopes the forum of oil producing and consuming nations will lead to more investment in fuel production, subsidy cuts in developing countries and better transparency in the fuel market.

He says the world leaders will discuss how to work out a solution to the crisis, in the short and long term.

"Noone can predict to where the oil crisis is going to end up because there's no simple solution and no one nation can shoulder the burden of the challenges that confront all of us in Jeddah today," he said.

"But at long last because of the leadership here we've got everyone in the one room accepting that there's an oil crisis."