Madrid  - Oil prices will no longer fall back to the low levels of previous times, Venezuelan expert Alvaro Silva Calderon warned Wednesday in Madrid.

"It is not possible to forecast the level to which prices will settle," Calderon said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa during the 19th World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in the Spanish capital Madrid.

"It is difficult to know where the ceiling could be," added Calderon, the chairman of the Venezuelan WPC committee, a former OPEC secretary-general and former energy minister of Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in Latin America.

"Until recently, it would have been very difficult to imagine" that prices could climb as high as they have, and yet the global economy is coping with them without major upsets, Calderon said.

The recent protests against high oil prices in Europe were not directed at oil producers, but at local governments, Calderon said, urging Europe to deal with such protests through adequate fuel tax policies. (dpa)