Heather Timmons

The Iraq Oil Ministry is undertaking the most comprehensive evaluation ever of the giant oil fields that are the country’s biggest natural resource, an important first step toward understanding the potential output of the fields and estimating the amount of investment needed.

Kazakhstan is determined to take a stake in the country’s Kashagan oil field, signaling that there might be further turmoil in the development of the world’s largest oil find in more than three decades, according to the country’s top energy official.

It is far from clear, experts say, whether the existing fleet can handle the new production that Saudi Arabia and others have promised in coming months.

Now that OPEC has agreed to raise its crude oil production quotas in hopes of taming high and jittery oil prices, industry experts are growing more concerned about both the capacity and the security of oil tankers, the next link in the supply chain.

Scrambling to control high oil prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet this weekend in Beirut before its official conference there next week and may pursue a plan to raise quotas sharply or do away with them entirely, an OPEC spokesman said yesterday.