After jumping as much as 2.5 percent early on, oil prices narrowed their gains this afternoon.

A decision to cut production is still being discussed by oil ministers from the 11 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which are considering whether to hold an emergency meeting in coming weeks, an OPEC delegate said.

Some news organizations, including The Financial Times and Reuters, citing unidentified OPEC delegates, said the organization planned to cut production by one million barrels a day, a reduction of nearly 4 percent from its current level of 27.6 million barrels. Most of the cut would come from Saudi Arabia, although most other OPEC members would also pare their output.

But there were conflicting reports from various representatives of OPEC’s member nations, including Kuwait, who said no agreement had been reached. OPEC’s president, Edmund Daukoru, said the group was considering an emergency meeting this month to decide on its output levels ahead of the next scheduled meeting in December.

“We are toying with the idea of an emergency meeting,” Mr. Daukoru, who is also the oil minister from Nigeria, said, according to The Associated Press. “We agree that something needs to be done.”

“We will have to agree on how much, how soon and how we distribute it among the member countries,” Mr. Daukoru said about a possible production cut.

Mr. Daukoru’s comments signal that OPEC has decided to step in more forcefully to stop the decline in prices, which has begun to rankle some of the group’s members. If endorsed, this would be OPEC’s first production cut since 2004.

“OPEC is touting its defensive strategy early on, when they have a chance to impact oil stocks before the winter starts,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director at PFC Energy, an oil consultancy in Washington. “They are putting fear back into the market.”

This afternoon, crude oil for November delivery rose 69 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $60.10 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, after trading as high as $60.97 a barrel earlier in the day. Oil futures had dropped 25 percent since their highest close of $77 a barrel in mid-July, briefly falling below $58 a barrel yesterday.

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