OPEC oil ministers have decided to leave their production quota unchaged. Against the backdrop of the global economic meltdown and falling oil prices, the group said only that it would more strictly enforce maintain its existing output levels and that it would meet again at the end of May.

Secretary-General of OPEC Abdalla Salem El Badri, background, from Libya walks by President of the OPEC conference and Minister of Petroleum Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos from Angola, at a news conference following a meeting of the ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on Sunday, March 15, 2009. [Ronald Zak/CCTV/AP Photo]

As a whole, the members under production quotas are overshooting the current quota by more than 800-thousand barrels a day, a fifth above the formal set limit.

The decision is good for major oil-consuming nations during this economic downturn, since a reduction in the production quota would have resulted in higher oil prices.

At the same time, OPEC said in a communique released after the meeting that it believes the current production curbs have already taken away some of the over-supply in the marketplace, which will eventually push prices higher -- a development that OPEC would favor considering oil prices are less than a third of their summer highs.

(CCTV March 16, 2009)