Oil ministers for Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria and Venezuela told reporters on the eve of Tuesday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries that the 12-nation group felt little pressure to boost its official production quota of 25.8 million barrels a day.

"There is enough crude in the market," said Gholam Hossein Nozari, Iran's acting oil minister and the former head of the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co.

But there were signs that small Gulf states were pressing for at least a modest boost in output -- if only to calm jittery oil markets.

Eshan Ul-Haq, chief analyst for Vienna's PVM Oil Associates, told The Associated Press there was speculation of a possible move afoot to raise output by around 500,000 barrels per day.

Dow Jones Newswires quoted an unidentified OPEC delegate as saying that Iran and Venezuela disputed the need for such an increase and that cartel officials were debating the timing.

Saudi Arabia, OPEC's top producer and the cartel's leading member, has not said publicly what it wants the cartel to do.

"This could be either the most uneventful OPEC meeting ever, or they may come with something up their sleeves," said analyst John Hall of London-based John Hall Associates.

Light, sweet crude for October delivery lost 60 cents to $76.10 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

October Brent crude fell 93 cents to $74.14 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

John Kingston, global director of oil at Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill, said OPEC faced "a dilemma."

Kingston said the cartel, which produces about 40 percent of the world's crude, must balance projections of a tight market in the next few months against concerns about rising defaults in the U.S. subprime mortgage industry and worries "that a significant slowdown in demand could be around the corner."

Mortgage lenders have tightened conditions on loans to prospective U.S. home buyers, feeding a housing slump that has stoked fears among energy investors of a wider economic slowdown and reduced demand for oil and gasoline.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency has urged the group to raise crude output, arguing that global demand is likely to outstrip supply with the approach of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

OPEC already is quietly pumping over its official output target, Platts said in a survey released Friday. Production by the 10 cartel members that adhere to the quota "has been steadily creeping up over the summer" and is now about 1 million barrels a day over, it said.

Other estimates suggest the 10, which exclude Angola and Iraq, are pumping closer to 30.3 million barrels a day.

PVM's Ul-Haq cautioned that even if OPEC agreed to boost output this week, "it takes time before this oil reaches refiners" and could take 40 days or longer to hit markets.

Ul-Haq also noted that the United Arab Emirates is scheduled to perform maintenance on its oilfields next month, and that the work would force it to cut production by roughly 400,000 barrels a day.

Analysts said an increase could come before the next OPEC meeting Dec. 5 in the United Arab Emirates if crude prices move closer to $80 a barrel, winter comes cold and early or a hurricane knocks out a key refinery in the Gulf of Mexico.

Crude hit a record $78.77 a barrel in early August on the Nymex. Many market-watchers see $80 as the new threshold.

The 12 OPEC members are Algeria, Angola, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

OPEC, http://www.opec.org