Financial experts from 12 oil exporting countries, meeting in Vienna, were reported on Tuesday (December 19) to be "well advanced in drawing up proposals for higher petroleum prices.

The experts, from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), will present their recommendations to a meeting of oil ministers in Teheran on Saturday (December 22). The decisions on a new price structure for crude oil will be taken over the weekend.

Meanwhile in London, Arab representatives were explaining Arab oil policy and pointing out how the United States and Western Europe could get their full oil supplies in future.

After Tuesday's Vienna meeting, a senior Venezuelan official said that all existing oil price agreements are being scrapped and future prices will depend on supply and demand.

Dr. Ramsey Michelena, Director of Economics at the Venezuelan Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons said all OPEC members now agreed that base price agreements negotiated by OPEC members with western Oil companies at Teheran, Tripoli and Lagos in 1971 "cease to exist and will not be renewed".

In his London press conference Dr. Adnan Al-Pachachi, a Minister of State of Abu Dhabi, called for dialogue between Western Europe and the Arab World.

A decision was taken at the Arab Summit Conference in Algiers to send delegations to western Europe, the United States and Japan to explain Arab oil policy and assure them they did not mean to punish the outside world but wanted to enlist world co-operation in forcing Israel to give up the occupied territories.