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OPEC will push members to comply with production cuts agreed last year when they meet tomorrow in Vienna to confront sagging demand for oil, ministers said.

“We would like to see compliance as high as possible,” Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister for Saudi Arabia, the group’s biggest producer, told reporters when he arrived at his hotel in Vienna today. “It is over 80 percent now, it can be better.”

While supply and demand are not yet balanced, inventories of oil will come down in due time, al-Naimi said. He declined to say whether he’ll recommend another round of supply cuts.

Members the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are still implementing 4.2 million barrels a day of reductions agreed in three separate meetings last year to support oil prices. OPEC, facing an economic slump that’s kept oil below $50, had implemented about 79 percent of planned reductions as of last month, according to a report from the group yesterday.

More cuts are unlikely because earlier moves have succeeded in tightening supplies as demand falls, a delegate from one OPEC country said this morning. The group may instead meet again before its next scheduled September gathering, the delegate said, declining to be named because the decision is not final.

“We have to insist on higher compliance of the cuts, which we believe has been good, but needs to be completed,” Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said in an interview in Vienna yesterday. Qatar’s oil minister echoed that view today.

Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil said earlier this week that OPEC probably will reduce production. “The market expects a reduction and we have to reduce, otherwise prices will fall.”

Falling Revenue

The group already faces a 61 percent plunge in net oil revenue this year amid declining production and prices, according to the U.S. Energy Department. It estimates OPEC will earn $383 billion in 2009 from crude exports.

Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed al-Abdullah al-Sabah said yesterday that “all options are on the table.”

“We don’t want to hurt the international economy, but at the same time we don’t won’t to hurt ourselves,” the Kuwaiti minister said in an interview at Vienna airport yesterday. “It is a very difficult equation. It is still undecided.”

Crude oil futures yesterday fell to $46.25 a barrel in New York. While prices have risen 3.7 percent this year, they are down more than $100 a barrel from their peak last July.

“OPEC should not think about cutting more until they meet their quotas,” Francisco Blanch, head of global commodity research at Merrill Lynch & Co., said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “There is a risk of over-tightening and the last thing the global economy needs is a spike in oil prices.”

$75 Oil Wanted

There remains too much oil in the market, Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said today in Vienna.

Iran’s OPEC Governor, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, said in an interview yesterday that OPEC would need to cut production if it wants prices to rise quickly to between $75 and $100 a barrel. That price level seems to be the “collective opinion” of oil producers and companies, he said.

Saudi Arabia is “100 percent compliant” with the agreed cutbacks, which will help reduce the glut, al-Naimi said bad credit payday loans. Last year, Saudi King Abdullah and al-Naimi both said a fair oil price for producers, companies and consumers is about $75.

Compliance Varies

OPEC’s Ministerial Monitoring Committee met today in Vienna to examine compliance with existing cutbacks, ahead of tomorrow’s full meeting. Minister from Iran, Kuwait and Nigeria left the meeting without commenting to reporters.

OPEC’s monthly report yesterday showed varying adherence to quotas, citing data from secondary sources that include analysts and news agencies.

Saudi Arabia had reduced crude production to 7.89 million barrels a day in February, or 166,000 barrels a day less than its target, the only country to do so, the report showed. Meantime, OPEC’s second-largest producer, Iran, was pumping 277,000 barrels a day more than its quota, meaning it had completed only 51 percent of its promised reduction. Nigeria had completed 54 percent and Angola 15 percent.

World oil consumption is usually lowest during April through June, after the end of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter period, and annual oil use is contracting for a second consecutive year for the first time in a quarter century.

Falling Demand

The Paris-based International Energy Agency and OPEC cut their 2009 forecasts for oil demand for a seventh month yesterday and reduced supply estimates as the global economic slump saps consumption as well as investment in new fields.

Both organizations see demand slumping more than 1 million barrels a day this year, to about 84.5 million barrels a day.

Earlier this month, when prices were lower, most analysts expected an OPEC cut, though some now doubt that view.

In a March 3-4 Bloomberg survey, 31 of 41 analysts said OPEC will curb output again, and the rest expected no change. Thirteen forecast a reduction of 500,000 to 1 million barrels a day, 12 said 1 million barrels and two estimated 1.5 million.

Now, “the probabilities are overwhelming that they will not cut,” Edward Morse, an economist at New York-based LCM Commodities LLC, said yesterday in a Bloomberg television interview. “If oil prices were at $40 or in the $30 range, I think it would be a fairly high probability they’d cut. With prices above $40, flirting with $50, they have the economy on their minds.”

Russian Oil, G-20

Russia, the largest producer outside OPEC, is sending a delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to the Vienna meeting. OPEC Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri said on Feb. 9 he was “very disappointed” that non-OPEC producers including Russia had failed to help reduce excess supply in the oil market.

The weekend meeting also coincides with a U.K. gathering of finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations, who will prepare for an April 2 summit to address the global recession.

Efforts by the G-20 to boost global growth will be more meaningful to oil markets than OPEC’s decision because prices reflect the economic slowdown, said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

“GDP is going to determine the price,” Yergin, author of a Pulitzer-Prize winning history of oil, said March 11 in Boca Raton, Florida.

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