1.
GV EXTERIOR Venue of I.E.A. meeting in Paris with street name "Rue de Franqueville" (2 shots)
0.08

2.
GV Delegates arriving and walking down steps
0.16

3.
SV Japanese delegation seated at conference table
0.19

4.
SV Australian delegates talking to one another PAN TO main table with Secretary General of OECD seated with fellow delegates
0.29

5.
SV United States delegates standing and talking
0.34

6.
SV New Zealand delegates sorting through papers PAN TO delegates from the Netherlands and Portugal
0.46

7.
SV British delegates at conference table
0.50

8.
SCU West German Economics Minister, Dr. Otto Lambsdorff, seated at table, and speaking in English
2.18


LAMBSDORFF: "It has been a meeting which was really for compromise. IEA by that has given a realistic answer to the policy of oil producing countries. All the speakers of member countries I.E.A. have been putting forward their concerns and their sorrow at the results of the oil price policy of the last weeks. I have tried to outline the consequences of that policy in my opening remarks with the following figures: The industrialised countries will have a current account deficit of the order of about fifty billion U.S. dollars this year compared to a net surplus of 30 billion U.S. dollars in 1978. In the same period, the developing countries' annual trade decicit will rise from 36 billion to about 70 billion U.S. dollars, and we think, ladies and gentlemen, that the new round of oil price increase will have a particularly damaging effect on oil importing developing countries; hitting them, as well as us, before they have begun to adjust to the 1979 price increase."





Initials BB/





Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved

Background: Leading Western oil consuming countries meeting in Paris on Thursday (22 May) have agreed they should reduce still further import targets up to 1985. It was only five months ago that they had fixed targets at 26.2 million barrels a day. Energy ministers of the 21-nation International Energy Agency decided to act again, in an effort to prevent a scramble for oil by consumer countries in the event of a supply crisis caused, for example, by an interruption of exports from a major producing country.

SYNOPSIS: The agency, part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development met as another rise in the price of oil was announced. Nigeria put up the price of a barrel of crude by two dollars, an increase of about ten percent. This followed an increase by Saudi Arabia.

Although the communique issued at the end of the meeting set no new formal target, the Agency secretariat estimated the possible reduction to be around four million barrels a day.

The Conference Chairman, West German Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff told correspondents that ministers had disagreed about precise import goals, and the outcome was a compromise. He said the recent oil price increases had placed a heavy burden on the world economy.