OPEC ministers agree to maintain current production rates

Vienna: OPEC's production policy will remain unchanged, according to senior officials, rebuffing calls from the and other industrialized nations to pump more oil and help ease record crude prices.

Meeting in Vienna, their decision comes amid heightened fears about the health of economic growth in the , the world's largest energy consumer, and against a backdrop of rising crude inventories in the world's industrialized nations.

Earlier, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who sets policy in the world's largest exporter, said that supply and demand were stable.