World needs more oil from OPEC: DOE

HOUSTON (Reuters) - OPEC should increase oil output to meet surging demand from China and other developing countries and counter a dramatic spike in crude prices, a senior official at the U.S. Department of Energy said on Monday.

"The more supply that OPEC can put on the market, the better it would be for all of us," DOE's acting deputy secretary, Jeff Kupfer, said at the Reuters Global Energy Summit in Houston.

Consumer nations such as the United States have urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to help tame oil prices that have doubled in a year, but the group has generally resisted, saying supplies are adequate.

OPEC controls about 30 percent of the world's oil production.

"We have constant discussions with OPEC ministers," said Kupfer. "While demand in the United States is not rising like it is in other parts of the world, it is a global market and as demand increases in China and other places it puts upward pressure on prices."

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis, editing by Phil Berlowitz)