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By Noah Browning
LONDON, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Oil producers from the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are
unlikely to agree to change their current deal on curbing output
until the market outlook becomes clearer, a senior official at
the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday.
"OPEC is quite likely to do what it has often done in the
past: put off taking a decision which involves changing the
current system until things become clearer," said Neil Atkinson,
head of the Paris-based IEA's oil industry and market division.
OPEC and allies led by Russia, a grouping known as OPEC+,
meet in Vienna on Thursday and Friday to decide what to do about
their current deal, which ends in March.
They are currently cutting output by 1.2 million barrels per
day, or about 1.2% of global demand, in order to reduce
oversupply and support prices.
"The Russians, we understand from press reports, are keen at
least on the political level not to change anything
immediately," he told a conference organised by S&P Global
Platts in London, stressing his comments were not a policy
recommendation.
"There's a lot of uncertainties out there, not least the
U.S. shale outlook, strength in demand, the overall economic
outlook, all the rest of it, that more likely than not they will
leave it in place and meet again in March", Atkinson said.