MEES SAYS SECOND WEEK MARCH OPEC OUTPUT 14 MLN BPD OPEC produced only about 14 mln bpd of oil in the second week of March -- 1.8 mln bpd below its ceiling -- largely because of pipeline problems in Turkey and Ecuador, the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES) estimated. A landslide breached Iraq's one mln bpd pipeline through Turkey on March 6 for a week, and earthquakes in Ecuador have shut down its export pipeline for four to five months. Ecuador has an OPEC quota of 210,000 bpd. MEES put Saudi Arabian output at 2.9 mln bpd in the first week of March and 3.1 mln bpd in the second, in addition to output from the Neutral Zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. MEES said Saudi Arabia was pumping more than 300,000 bpd of its total production into floating storage. Saudi Oil Minister Hisham Nazer told Reuters and the television news agency Visnews yesterday that Saudi output, including Neutral Zone production, was around three mln bpd. The Cyprus-based newsletter also said authoritative Libyan oil sources said Libya was producing 850,000 bpd, compared with its 948,000 bpd quota, and that actual liftings are much lower than that. It said one major Libyan equity producer had partially stopped lifting its 55,000 bpd equity entitlement for March because Libya was insisting on official prices, but is still lifting 40,000 bpd of debt crude at official prices and a further 25,000 bpd of "purchase crude." It said small equity producers, with entitlements of only 2,000 to 3,000 bpd, had also told Tripoli they could not lift at official prices. MEES said Iraq had sent a telex to OPEC and member countries calling for the formation of a committee to study what it said were inequalities in marketing potential among various members. The newsletter said the Iraqi letter indicated Baghdad was having difficulty selling crude at official prices. The Iraqi telex pointed out that some member countries export substantial volumes of oil that are not subject to OPEC price regulations -- exports of refined products, equity crude on which the margins are equivalent to covert discounts and "other forms of hydrocarbons" which are marketed in package deals with crude oil.