Algeria's oil minister forecast on Tuesday that oil prices would likely rise in early 2010 after production cuts by the OPEC crude producers' cartel since last year.
"There will be a lot of volatility, because of the uncertainties with the economy," the minister, Chakib Khelil, told reporters as he arrived in Vienna for Wednesday's meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Producing Countries.
But he added that recent firmer prices would be sustained, "and by early next year we should see prices rising" further.
OPEC members, which pump 40 per cent of the world's oil, agreed in late 2008 to remove a massive 4.2 million barrels of daily output from the market as it sought to prop up crumbling prices.
The cartel's official daily output quota has stood at 24.84 million barrels per day since January but analysts say that compliance with the cuts has slipped over recent months to less than 70 per cent.
© 2009 AAP
