Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela wants the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to maintain production when the group meets in December, Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said.

“For this meeting, Venezuela prefers to be cautious,” Ramirez said today in an interview in El Tigre, Venezuela. “The level of OPEC production has to be maintained.”

OPEC member nations will meet in December in Angola to discuss output quotas. They agreed last December to cut output by a record 4.2 million barrels a day after oil prices sank 70 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel in July 2008.

Oil has rallied 72 percent this year as investors use the commodity as a hedge against a weakening dollar and the global economy emerges from the deepest recession since the 1930s. The International Energy Agency has said that higher oil prices are a “significant risk” to global economic growth.

“There remain grave problems in the world economy but especially that of the U.S.,” Ramirez said. Crude prices are rising because of a “perception that the economy is improving, and there’s also the devaluation of the dollar.”

The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, grew at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter, after contracting for four previous quarters. The dollar has plunged 5.08 percent against the euro this year, the worst performer of 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg.

Quotas Unchanged

OPEC, which accounts for 40 percent of the world’s oil output, kept production quotas unchanged at a meeting on Sept. 9-10 in Vienna. Algeria, Qatar and other OPEC members have also said that oil supply is sufficient and should not be raised.

Iran’s OPEC Governor Mohammad Ali Khatabi said this week that oil between $70 a barrel and $80 a barrel “won’t hurt the economy” and signifies that economic conditions are “better.”

Crude oil for December delivery fell $2.83, or 3.5 percent, to $77.04 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are down 4.2 percent this week, the first decline this month.

OPEC’s 12 members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Bodzin in Caracas at sbodzin@bloomberg.net; Andres R. Martinez in Mexico City at o amartinez28@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: October 30, 2009 17:02 EDT