QUITO: President Rafael Correa said Saturday he ordered Italy's Agip Oil company to halt production so Ecuador can meet OPEC's agreed output cut for the country of 40,000 barrels a day.

"I have instructed the Oil and Mining Minister to cut back on all of Agip's production," Correa said in his weekly radio and television programme.

Agip, a subsidiary of Italian energy giant EN, currently produces around 28,000 barrels of oil in Ecuador's Amazon basin, under a 2000 contract Correa said is not profitable for the country.

Through Agip's production cut, he said, "we'll get rid of 20,000 barrels of the 40,000 we have to slash" from our production.

Without mentioning any names, Correa said he was considering cutting back on oil production of "other companies that do not benefit the country," to fulfil the quota of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Ecuador, the smallest of OPEC's 13 members, produces about 505,000 barrels of oil a day, half of which is from state-run Petroecuador and the rest from foreign oil companies.

On December 17, OPEC agreed to cut its output by 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) at a meeting in Oran, Algeria. The biggest production cut in the oil cartel's history came after oil prices plummeted to four-year lows from record highs in July of US$147 a barrel.

- AFP/yb