Oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed on Wednesday to curb overproduction by more than 500,000 barrels a day.

The move is widely seen as a compromise meant to avoid new turmoil in the crude markets while preventing prices from falling too far.

Omar Farouk Ibrahim, the head of the Public Relations and Information Department at the OPEC Secretariat, announced the cut in production.

"Since the market is oversupplied, the conference agreed to abide by September 2007 production allocations, adjusted to include new members Angola and Ecuador, and excluding Indonesia and Iraq, totaling 28.8 million barrels per day."

The oil prices spiked to a new record just short of 150 US dollars a barrel in July, only to drop nearly 30 percent in subsequent months.

OPEC nations control two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves, and about 40 percent of the world's oil production, affording them considerable control over the global market.