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EU finance ministers ask non-OPEC nations to boost oil production
London: U.K's chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown has said he's talking to non-OPEC oil producing nations about boosting output should the cartel fail to stem further price increases.

``You need either to have an agreement on increased production capacity from the OPEC countries or we've got to provide increased production elsewhere,'' Brown said on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Sunday A.M. program. ``That's why we're talking to Russia, we're talking to Norway, we're talking to all the other oil producers outside OPEC as well.''

Brown and other EU finance ministers have called on OPEC members to follow through on pledges to boost production.

The price of crude rose to a record $70.85 a barrel on Aug. 30 after Hurricane Katrina curtailed output of oil and refined products in the U.S., intensifying concern that production may fail to meet demand as the economies of China and India expand.

OPEC members, which account for about 40 percent of the world's oil production, are proposing an increase of as much as one million barrels a day to 29 million in their combined quota, according to Javad Yarjani, Iran's National Representative to OPEC.

Brown has also asked OPEC to "open up its books'' in order to allow better scrutiny of supply. "What we need is transparency in the oil business. We need to know what the reserves are, we need to know what's being done year to year,'' Brown said. "If OPEC has a purpose, and it's a cartel that's under challenge, it needs to show it can create stability by being transparent.''
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