India has asked for Saudi Arabia's intervention in stabilising the volatility in global crude production and help maintain oil prices at levels that do not impact developing economies.

During his meeting with the visiting Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, prime minister Manmohan Singh informed him that high oil prices had hurt import dependent economies like India. He requested the Saudi minister to exert its influence on OPEC members to refrain from measures that lead to price and availability volatility.

Al-Naimi, however, said it's the market, which determines the oil prices. "We do not want to see volatility in the market (but) the prices are determined by the market."

"What we as producers do is look at supply side, look at demand side and look at inventory levels and hope all of the three elements stay in equilibrium. Because if they do, you will see less and less volatility," he told reporters after meeting Deora.

Prior to the PM's meeting with the visiting oil ministers who are in New Delhi to attend the Petrotech conference, petroleum minister Murli Deora told them that price volatility was hurting developing nations.

Deora believes that though prices had come down this year, they ought to come down further. Crude prices are currently hovering around $50 dollars a barrel.

OPEC member Venezuela hqad earlier in the week proposed requisitioning an extraordinary meeting of PEC members to cut back on crude output to prevent prices from sliding further.  Earlier in October 2006 Venezuela and Nigeria had scaled down their daily production by a combined 170,000 barrels.

India, depends on imports for 73 per cent of its oil requirement. As a result of international crude prices touching a record $76 a barrel between April-October 2006 its crude oil import bill rose sharply by 45 per cent to Rs134,909 crore ($29.322 billion) from Rs93,006 crore ($21.165 billion) in the same period last year.