Algeria to seek increased oil quota

The country's energy minister, Chakib Khelil, said Algeria would ask the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise its quota from 693,000 barrels per day to 1.1m barrels per day.

Khelil is a former OPEC president and said this would be the first of a series of requests, with another expected in 2004.

He said the country could not impose its demands on OPEC members but would "continue to seek an increase in its quota".

Oil price uncertainty

OPEC is due to meet again on 18 September in Osaka, Japan.

There have already been suggestions that the organisation will decide to increase output in a bid to end the run of rising prices over recent months.

Opec has said it will keep the price of oil between $22 and $28 a barrel after it reached a three month high of over $27.20 last month amid fears that an attack on Iraq would disrupt supplies.

There have been reports that oil shortages in the United States reached a 17-month low in recent weeks, hence the surge in price.

But OPEC president Rilwanu Lukman has pledged to cartel members that the group would fill any oil market shortage during the coming winter in the Northern hemisphere.

OPEC controls about 40% of the world's oil production but has come under criticism this year over reports that members cut production to boost prices.