Kuwait's oil minister said late on Thursday that Opec members' compliance to quotas has fallen to 68 per cent, from 77 per cent in May, state news agency Kuna  reported.

Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah told the Kuna news agency that there are an extra 700,000 barrels of oil in the market, in addition to 400,000 more produced by non-member states.

Opec on Thursday agreed to hold output targets steady, although some OPEC members called for stricter compliance with existing curbs.

Opec has kept its official output targets steady since it announced late last year a record cut of 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from September 2008 production.

But the compliance discipline has slipped from a peak of 80 percent to less than 70 per cent as oil prices have rebounded from a low of $32.40 in December to this year's peak of $75 hit in August.-Reuters