Venezuela: US Attack On Iran Would Push Oil Price 'Out Of Control'

A U.S. attack on Iran would push the oil market ' absolutely out of control,' Venezuela´s oil minister said Saturday, and he insisted that oil producing countries' hands are tied at a time of record high oil prices. 'A U.S. attack against Iran would throw the market absolutely out of control with a price hike that is hard to predict,' Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told Dow Jones Newswires on the sidelines of the V PetroCaribe oil summit. 'The U.S. continues to pressure producing countries...there's a large war premium' on prices. He said world crude inventories are 'in equilibrium,' with some fluctuations but an overall coverage that he described as 'sufficient'. Members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the minister said, are trying to avoid a scenario of too much supply. 'If inventories go too high and a collapse in the market price happens like it did in the 1990s, it's hard to bring it back into equilibrium,' Ramirez said. He insisted that more production from OPEC countries would only end up in inventories at this point. He added, 'There seems to be a consensus right now that the minimum price for (WTI) crude sits above $100 a barrel and that will continue like that.' Venezuela is a founding member of OPEC and a big crude supplier to the U.S. and Latin American countries.