OPEC Ministers Talk About Prices, Output

GENEVA —  Oil ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries met for two hours here Wednesday and, after an inconclusive discussion of prices and production levels, recessed until today.

In the afternoon, a series of bilateral discussions were conducted in an effort to sort out exactly what the 13-member cartel’s goals should be and how to achieve them. A source who attended the morning session said it was “a general talk about production and prices, but we didn’t get anywhere.”

Subroto, the Indonesian oil minister, was reported to be drawing up a projection of world oil demand in the last half of this year and of what OPEC’s “fair share” of that market should be. It was not clear whether Subroto was responding to a formal request from the other members or whether he was simply taking the lead in an effort to get something accomplished.

In any case, he appears to be taking up about where he left off at the last OPEC meeting in March, which ended inconclusively after nine days of talks.