CARACAS: Venezuela — which has been trying hard to persuade oil producers to cut output in order to boost prices — announced on Thursday that a technical meeting of OPEC and other crude-producing countries would take place on October 21. Minister of oil and mining and president of state oil giant PDVSA Eulogio del Pino confirmed the meeting in a statement, without specifying where the meeting would take place or which non-OPEC countries would participate. The statement also said the minister spoke by telephone with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak on topics including ‘cooperation among members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other non-OPEC oil-producing countries’.