Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- OPEC is likely to maintain oil production levels when it meets next in Angola in December and prices may stay near today’s level, Kuwait’s oil minister said.

“I don’t expect any output change in December,” Sheikh Ahmad al-Sabah told reporters in Kuwait today. “This year, impossible. This year, no way,” Sheikh Ahmed said when asked if he foresees OPEC raising output this year.

Compliance with quotas among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is “slipping a bit, it is a concern,” Sheikh Ahmad said. Overproduction from Russia, which is outside OPEC, is a concern, “but it will hurt Russia also,” he said.

“I expect oil prices at between $60 and $80 till the end of the year,” the minister said. Oil demand is “good” in Asia and will improve in the U.S. and Europe in 2010, he added. “Inventories will go down when the economy flourishes.”

Oil rose for a second day as the dollar’s decline bolstered the appeal of commodities as a hedge against inflation. Crude futures for November delivery rose as much $1.22, or 1.7 percent, to $71.63 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

OPEC kept production quotas unchanged at a meeting on Sept. 9-10 in Vienna and will meet again in Luanda, Angola, on Dec. 22. The group’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Kuwait, OPEC’s sixth-largest oil producer, revised its energy strategy to target a production capacity of 4 million barrels a day by 2030 rather than the originally planned date of 2020 due to a lack of technical know-how, market weakness and manpower, Sheikh Ahmad said today. The emirate has a sustainable capacity of 3 million barrels a day, the minister said.

“We have started to get out the bottleneck,” Sheikh Ahmed also said, in reference to the global economic crisis.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fiona MacDonald in Kuwait at fmacdonald4@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: October 6, 2009 06:46 EDT