Oil producers are pumping too much oil to the market and a price under $100 is too low, Iran's oil minister has said.

Opec members should respect their output targets to prevent oversupply from worsening, Gholamhossein Nozari said.

High fuel prices and the wider economic crisis have eaten into oil demand in the US and other big consuming countries. Concern about slowing demand has knocked US oil to around $93 a barrel from a peak of over $147 struck in July.

'$100 and below is neither suitable for oil producers nor oil consumers,' Nozari said at an energy conference in Iran's capital.

But Nozari said he did not expect Opec ministers to meet to discuss oil policy ahead of their next scheduled gathering in December in Algeria.

Producers were pumping around 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) more oil than the market needed, Nozari said.

If Opec members did not stick to the group's formal output targets, oversupply could triple by the first quarter of next year, he added.

'With the Opec decision to cut, oversupply could be controlled in the first quarter of next year,' Nozari said. 'But if they do not carry out the cut, oversupply could reach 1.2 million bpd.'

Opec, source of more than a third of the world's oil, agreed last month to trim output. The producer group called for members to comply more strictly with output targets, a move officials said would cut supplies by around 500,000 barrels per day.

Opec's 12 members bound by targets reduced output by 220,000 bpd last month from August, a survey found.

But the group was still pumping at 30.18m bpd, over 500,000 bpd above target. Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, is among the members of Opec that need high oil prices to balance its budget.

Nozari had previously said $100 was the lowest appropriate price for a barrel of crude.