The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)'s weekly average crude oil prices stood at 67.49 U.S. dollars per barrel, down 0.25 dollars from this year's record high registered in the previous week, the cartel's secretariat said on Monday.

OPEC's daily average oil prices stood over 67 dollars per barrel in the last five trading days and reached 67.88 dollars per barrel last Friday.

The report, issued by the U.S. energy department last week, said the gasoline stock in the country fell unexpectedly.

Marketing analysts believed that the demand for gasoline in theU.S. has reached its peak since June, and the weak supply of gasoline was one of the important reasons to drive the prices high.

The demand for crude oil would reach its high point and the supply would fall in trouble in the fourth quarter, as most of the refineries had to be prepared for the heating oil in the winter of the Northern Hemisphere.

Mohammed al-Hamli, OPEC's rotating president and oil minister of the United Arab Emirates, said last week in the international energy conference in Istanbul, Turkey, that it was not necessary for OPEC to discuss the increase of production before the next ministerial conference in September due to the current sufficient crude oil supply and stocks.

Some analysts believed that OPEC would not take a production increase into consideration before the international crude oil prices reached 75 dollars per barrel, and the small extent of increase could not restrain the soaring prices.