OPEC Decides Not to Lower Oil Output : Energy: The cartel wants a price of $21 a barrel. It hopes that an increase in demand later this year will make that happen.

VIENNA — OPEC ministers agreed Tuesday to hold oil output steady for the next three months, striking a compromise designed to support prices until demand for crude picks up later this year.

Iran’s oil minister, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said after the meeting that all 13 ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to maintain a production ceiling of 22.3 million barrels a day in the July-September period.

The cartel put off until September the tough question of how to reincorporate the production of Kuwait and Iraq when they finally get their crude back into the supply stream. Both produced about 4.6 million barrels a day before the crisis began last August and are expected to become big exporters as the effects of the war fade.

Gathered for their twice-yearly conference to review production and prices, ministers met in hotel rooms for hours seeking a formula to boost prices to the elusive target of $21 a barrel.

Oil is more than $3 below that goal, and several ministers said it was time for OPEC to move prices higher.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest exporter, ruled out production cuts as the way to boost prices.

Saudi Oil Minister Hisham Nazir said his country supported OPEC’s $21 objective, but would not starve world oil markets to achieve it.

“We have always felt that we will support $21, but we never said that we will force that on the market by a deliberate creation of shortage,” he said.

Saudi Arabia emerged from the chaos of the Gulf War as OPEC’s powerhouse. Its vast reserves and huge capacity to pump crude permitted it to produce about 8 million barrels a day, more than a third of OPEC’s output.

The International Energy Agency’s Monthly Oil Market Report, released Tuesday, estimated cartel production at 22.2 million barrels a day last month, 100,000 barrels off its April pace.

Algerian Oil Minister Sadek Boussena, who resigned as OPEC’s president to concentrate on representing Algiers’ interests, reminded members that they had agreed to defend the $21 target price.

The 22.3-million-barrel cap was designed to shore up prices by ending the unbridled pumping that OPEC unleashed to make up for the missing Iraqi and Kuwaiti crude.

But Boussena said current output had kept the average price of OPEC crude at just over $17.