Oil buyers, sellers say price is beyond control
By Svetlana Kovalyova and Barbara Lewis
ROME (Reuters) - Oil at $117 a barrel has left energy producers and consumers in rare agreement there is little they can do for now to prevent prices rising higher still.
Oil hit the latest in a series of records on Friday after a rebel attack in Nigeria added to supply concerns and offset the impact of a U.S.-led economic slowdown, which has begun to eat into energy demand.
"There is a possibility of still going higher," Shokri Ghanem, Libya's top oil official, said on his arrival in Rome for talks between producer and consumer countries.
Top fuel burner the United States has led the calls for more oil to try to calm prices, but OPEC's biggest producer Saudi Arabia has dismissed this as political rhetoric.
"Today there is no reason to jump up and down and say 'we will supply more crude' -- because that request from consuming countries is probably politically-driven rather than a fundamental requirement," Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in an interview with industry newsletter Petroleum Argus.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has repeatedly said it will not use the International Energy Forum (IEF) in Rome as the occasion to revise its output policy.
"There will be friendly talks as usual when we see each other," said Ghanem. "There are no plans for an official meeting."
