The market struggled to digest a drop in oil prices, which fell to a 19-month low near $51 a barrel after OPEC leader in Saudi Arabia said that there might be no need for further production cuts. Oil prices have fallen about 15 per cent since the start of the year and are well below the record $78.40 a barrel they hit in July. OPEC wanted to hold talk but Saudi Arabia said: Do not panic. Actually there is no reason for a meeting the market is in a healthy condition and moving in the right direction Edmund Daukoru, Nigeria’s energy minister is confident about the market and suggesting that OPEC members should wait until February before deciding on further cuts in their crude oil output. But other OPEC members, including Iran and Venezuela, have recently publicly backed further action. OPEC which supplies more than a third of the world’s oil, wanted to keep oil prices at about $60 a barrel. In October the group reduced its production by 1.2m barrels a day, but have so far only achieved half of that amount. In December, OPEC met again and decided to further reduce output by 500,000 barrels a day from February 1.