Some have speculated that he might be trying to wrestle control of the Guarani Aquifer, one of the largest underground water reserves, from the Paraguayans.

Rumours of Mr Bush's supposed forays into South American real estate surfaced during a recent 10-day visit to the country by his daughter Jenna Bush. Little is known about her trip to Paraguay, although officially she travelled with the UN children's agency Unicef to visit social projects. Photographers from the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color tracked her down to one restaurant in Paraguay's capital Asunción, where she was seen flanked by 10 security guards, and was also reported to have met Paraguay's president, Nicanor Duarte, and the US ambassador to Paraguay, James Cason. Reports in sections of the Paraguayan media suggested she was sent on a family "mission" to tie up the land purchase in the "chaco".

Erasmo Rodríguez Acosta, the governor of the Alto Paraguay region where Mr Bush's new acquisition supposedly lies, told one Paraguayan news agency there were indications that Mr Bush had bought land in Paso de Patria, near the border with Brazil and Bolivia. He was, however, unable to prove this, he added.

Last week the Paraguayan news group Neike suggested that Ms Bush was in Paraguay to "visit the land acquired by her father - relatively close to the Brazilian Pantanal [wetlands] and the Bolivian gas reserves".

The US presence in Paraguay has been under scrutiny since May 2005 when the country's Congress agreed to allow 400 American marines to operate there for 18 months in exchange for financial aid.

At the time many viewed the arrival of troops as a sign that Washington was trying to monitor US business interests in neighbouring Bolivia, after the election of Evo Morales, a leftwing leader who promised to nationalise his country's natural gas industry.

For instance, oil deposits unreachable 40 years ago can be tapped using improved technology, and oil once too costly to extract from tar sands, organic matter or coal is now worth manufacturing. Though some resources might be costlier now, they still are needed.

"The most common question I get is, 'When are we going to run out of oil?' The correct response is, 'Never,'" said Cheney. "It might be a heck of a lot more expensive than it is now, but there will always be some oil available at a price, perhaps $10 to $100 a gallon."

Cheney also said that gasoline prices today, adjusted for inflation, are about what they were in the early part of the last century. Current prices seem inordinately high, he said, because crude oil was at an extremely low price, $10 a barrel, eight years ago and now fetches around $58 a barrel.

U.S. crude for November delivery settled $1.68 lower at $56.82 a barrel, the lowest this year after trading as low as $56.55 in intraday activity. U.S. oil prices have dropped from July records of $78.40 a barrel on healthy inventories.

London Brent crude fell $1.19 to $59.68 a barrel.

OPEC ministers agreed early on Friday to reduce output by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), 200,000 bpd more than expected. But some analysts expressed doubts about whether the cartel will reach the targeted reductions.

"This cut should result in about a half million barrels per day of production actually getting taken out of the market," said Jim Ritterbusch, president at Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois.

Some OPEC ministers said a further cut of 500,000 bpd could follow when the cartel next meets in Nigeria in December. They said they were concerned about high fuel stocks in consumer countries, particularly in the United States, and a projected drop in demand for OPEC oil in 2007 as competitors bring more supplies online.

The producer group, which supplies about a third of the world's crude, said in a statement after an emergency meeting in Doha that oversupply had destabilized the oil market.

The cut was its deepest since January 2002 and is equal to about 4.3 percent of September supply.

"It was a surprise. It shows the determination of OPEC," said Tetsu Emori, chief strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures Ltd. in Tokyo. "They obviously wanted to send a message to the market."

SAUDI BACKING

"This is not the end of the road because we have another meeting coming up," Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi told Reuters.

Naimi said that Saudi Arabia fully backed the OPEC cut and had already notified customers of lower supply. The world's top exporter will shoulder around 32 percent of the cut, amounting to 380,000 bpd.

Ministers' failure to speak with one voice before the hastily arranged talks had deepened oil's losses of around 25 percent from a mid-July peak of $78.40 a barrel.

To sidestep the issue of quotas and market share that analysts said had begun to cost the cartel credibility, OPEC published only a list of individual cutbacks but left formal quotas unchanged.

OPEC's cut also signaled that it would defend a price of about $60 a barrel, high enough to justify its investment in future production capacity but low enough to allow economic growth and deter a flood of alternative fuels.

"The drop in prices that has already occurred has had a remarkably positive influence on consumer attitudes and spending in the U.S," said Adam Sieminksi of Deutsche Bank.

"The shopping season is coming up and it's going to be a lot better with oil at $60 than at $80."

The producer curbs will begin to bite just as the northern hemisphere heads into winter, when oil demand surges.

Private weather forecaster AccuWeather said this week that the U.S. East Coast should be chillier than normal this year.

The Houston-based company posted third-quarter income from continuing operations of $615 million, or $0.58 a share, compared with income from continuing operations of $492 million, or $0.47 a share, in the third quarter of 2005.

The figures topped analysts' average forecast of 54 cents per share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Like others in the sector, Halliburton has seen revenues and profits rise over the past two years as high oil and gas prices spurred energy producers to increase production.

Shares in Halliburton, which has said it would separate off its KBR engineering and construction unit, have declined 7 percent so far this year, underperforming the Philadelphia Oilfield Services index (^OSX - news) gain of 3 percent.

Ford, which is closing 16 plants and cutting up to 45,000 jobs in North America, recorded a net loss of $3.08 a share. A year ago, it posted a loss of $284 million, or 15 cents a share.

The third-quarter loss from continuing operations was 62 cents a share, matching the average analyst expectation as tracked by Reuters Estimates.

Ford said special items reduced third-quarter results by $4.6 billion after taxes, or $2.46 per share.

The automaker took pretax charges of $861 million for job cuts related to plant closings in North America, $259 million for global personnel reduction programs at other facilities, and $437 million to pay out pensions earlier than planned for employee buyouts.

Ford also took pretax charges of $2.2 billion to write down the value of North American assets and $1.6 billion for the impairment of Jaguar and Land Rover assets.

Ford reported third-quarter revenue of $36.7 billion, down $4.1 billion from the same period a year ago.

"There are still some sporadic incidents, mostly stone throwing," he said.

In a statement, the Action Police CFTC police union urged the government to deploy "a visible and large number" of riot police to discourage youths from constantly attacking patrols.

In recent days police patrols in a number of towns across the country have been attacked by petrol bombs.

"This latest clash marks the progressive start of a repeat of the riots of November 2005," the statement said, referring to the incident in Grigny.

Speaking before the Senate, Clément said the government will introduce a new crime of "deliberate violence against a law enforcement officer committed with a weapon and in an organised gang" carrying a 15-year jail term, as opposed to the current 10 years.

Suspected offenders will appear before the Court of Assise, which includes a jury and hears more serious crimes, Clement said.

Earlier Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said he intended to pass a law so that "attackers of policemen, gendarmes and fire officers can be sent before the Court of Assises".

Clement also said that people who "incite riot and call on people to resist the police" will face two months in jail, as opposed to the current punishment of a fine.