Brown challenges Opec on oil prices

GORDON Brown is to use his position as the most senior finance minister of the world's industrial superpowers to challenge oil-producing nations and tell them to cut prices.

He will use the platform of an economic gathering this month to demand that the 11-nation Organisation of Petroleum Exporting-Countries boost productionand help bring down prices from record highs.

With Opec backtracking on suggestions that it will pump a further 500,000 barrels a day - 0.6% of global demand -Britain is getting tough. Brown flies to Washington for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Group of Seven industrial nations.

He is chairman of the IMF ministers' committee and of the G7 finance ministers. He is due to become chairman of the European-Union finance ministers' council, Ecofin, in July.

Energy experts doubt if Brown's blunt demands will be more effective than diplomatic efforts. But the Treasury feels that tough talking by the Chancellor can help avert a world slowdown brought about by high oil prices. Now at about $57 a barrel, nearly six times its low in the late Nineties, some analysts are predicting $100 a barrel within 12 months.

The Washington meeting will take place against the probable backdrop of a General Election campaign.

One source said: 'There will be no sense in which the Chancellor will be campaigning. But people will see a major figure on the world stage and may ask whether they could see Oliver Letwin [shadow chancellor] or Alan Milburn [Labour election chief and Brown's key rival] doing this.'

But oil experts are doubtful about Brown's chances of success. Axel Busch of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said: 'There is nothing he or Opec can do. People fear any disruption to supply could trigger a shortage - that is what's behind high prices.'