The oil market will tighten towards summer, a condition that should compel OPEC to take action when it next meets in June, the head of the International Energy Agency said Monday.

While the current oil market is indeed well supplied, "demand will pick up, and market is getting tighter towards summer," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka told Dow Jones Monday on the sidelines of an energy meeting here. "So (we) wish OPEC will make the appropriate decision in June."

Energy ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, including Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi, have said in the last 24 hours that the global oil market is well supplied in spite of the Libya outages due to refinery maintenance in Europe .

Tanaka said he largely agrees with the Naimi's assessment of current conditions. But "If the Libyan situation does not improve very quickly, someone in OPEC must fill the gap," Tanaka told reporters.

The IEA represents energy consuming governments and often calls on OPEC to boost output. OPEC next meets in June.

Naimi said Sunday that Saudi Arabia has cut output in March, but might increase it again in April.

A Saudi official told Dow Jones Monday that the Saudis are considering raising output again, in part because some Saudi refiners that had been in maintenance have come back on line. But the Saudi official said "it is too early to tell if the Saudi output will be higher than the previous month."
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