"Opec is doing whatever it can to cool prices," he said of the international oil cartel.

"Most of Opec countries, and producers outside Opec, are producing enough with this kind of (record high) prices," he told journalists on the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (ADIPEC 2004).

Nassiri insisted that the six oil-rich Gulf monarchies, including his country, were investing to increase oil production.

"In the Gulf, we are investing to increase our production capacity even when prices were around 10 dollars the barrel, we invested in our production capacity," he said.

Nassiri said that the UAE was pumping at near its maximum levels, while it planned to boost capacity by one million barrels per day (bpd) by 2006.

"If Zakum oilfield develops the way we think, it will add more to our capacity. Also, we have other two or three fields we're trying to increase their production capacity," he told reporters.

"That will increase our capacity to around 3.5 millions barrels daily, we hope by 2006," he said.

Currently, the UAE is "producing almost our full capacity" of 2.5 million bpd, he said, commenting on measures to ease the surge in world oil prices.

Oil ministers from major Gulf producers, including Saudi Arabia's Ali al-Nuaimi, and other countries were to take part in in the four-day Abu Dhabi conference.