Opec officials dismissed comments from Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may raise its oil output target when the producer group meets this week.


The group’s present production rate is around 31 million barrels per day (mbpd), and the group forecasts the call on Opec stocks to rise to 30.5 mbpd in the second half of the year, the bank said in a note ahead of Opec’s June 5 talks.


Both are higher than the group’s output target of 30 mbpd, which has remained unchanged for several years.


One Opec delegate, in Vienna for the group’s meeting, said there was no need to raise the target.


“You see that Opec is already producing higher (than 30 mbpd),” the delegate said. An official from an African Opec country, asked about the possibility of raising the target, said:


“I am not so sure that it will be adopted. It sounds unlikely now that Opec countries are struggling with an excess of supply from them and non-Opec countries.”


Opec is likely to keep its output target unchanged because the global oil market appears in good shape and prices are expected to firm from current levels, several Opec officials told Reuters.


Opec oil supply in May climbed further to its highest in more than two years as increasing Angolan exports and record or near-record output from Saudi Arabia and Iraq outweighed outages in smaller producers, a Reuters survey showed.