The OPEC oil producers’ cartel held its crude output quotas unchanged at its meeting in Angola on Tuesday, warning of lingering weakness in the world economy.

“Rollover,” Khelil told reporters, using the organisation’s term to indicate that ministers had maintained the existing quotas for the group of major oil producers, which were put in place a year ago to stabilise prices.

Khelil added that the 12-member group will next meet on March 17.

The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was expected to hold output steady while cautiously looking for a strengthening in the market and playing down the prospect of a surge from Iraq’s oilfields.

“The economic recovery has gathered pace,” said the group’s president, Angolan Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos, at the start of the meeting.

“The market remains well supplied. Prices have moved up to more comfortable levels,” he said as he welcomed ministers to the first OPEC meeting hosted by Angola, OPEC’s newest member, which is enjoying an oil boom.

“However, the fragility remains in the market and we should not forget the detrimental volatility we experienced last year,” Vasconcelos added.

The cartel’s most influential member, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said crude price levels were “perfect”.

“Everybody is happy,” he told reporters. “We’re happy with it… because the investor is happy.”

Observers had said ministers at the meeting would have one eye on Iraq’s recovering oil industry and its ambitious plans to ramp up its production to levels that could rival OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia.

But Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said before the meeting that he did not expect to tackle the question of production allowances for Iraq, while stressing its special situation as a country recovering from war.

Iraq is currently exempt from the cartel’s system of quotas, which aim to limit production by members in order to stabilise prices.

Host Angola joined OPEC in 2007 and has overtaken Nigeria as Africa’s biggest crude producer, according to the International Energy Agency, but still suffers from three decades of civil war that ended seven years ago.

Tuesday’s meeting caps a year of recovery for oil prices, which have more than doubled since the cartel set strict quota cuts in the depths of the economic crisis a year ago.