What was going on when I was born?

Six key oil ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries met in secret in Geneva yesterday and the day before and, oil industry sources said, moved toward cutting back oil production to keep prices up in the face of growing supplies and weak demand. As a result of the meeting, which lasted a day and a half, Saudi Arabia indicated that it intended to cut production by 2 million barrels a day, to about 8.3 million, according to Harry Neustein, a crude oil trader who said he had talked by telephone with OPEC officials yesterday. Other OPEC nations are said to have expressed willingness to cut production by a total of about 500,000 barrels daily, he said. Saudis May Raise Price Industry sources in the United States and Europe said that in addition to the production cutbacks believed to have been discussed at the Vienna meeting, Saudi Arabia appeared ready to raise the price of its basic grade of crude oil to $34 a barrel from $32, which could add an estimated penny a gallon to gasoline prices in the United States.

In an apparent rebuff to the Reagan Administration, President Jose Lopez Portillo has gone out of his way to stress Mexico's close ties with Cuba just three days after a United States delegation arrived here with what it called proof of Havana's support for Salvadoran guerrillas. After the signing of a sugar agreement with Cuba yesterday, Mr. Lopez Portillo said that Cuba was the Latin American country ''most dear'' to Mexico. He went on to describe relations between the two countries as an example ''for our region, for our continent and for the world.'' Mexican officials said that they believed Mr. Lopez Portillo's statement was intended as Mexico's response to American efforts to hold Cuba responsible for sending arms to Marxist guerrillas trying to oust the United States-backed junta in El Salvador.

Westchester County Airport was closed indefinitely yesterday by County Executive Alfred B. DelBello. He acted after a small plane made a forced landing Thursday evening on an ice-covered lake near the airport and after an angry disagreement with Federal officials over how to deal with safety issues raised by the incident. Mr. DelBello said he closed the airport because the Federal Aviation Administration had reneged on an agreement to consult with him yesterday on projected tests of the electronic instrument landing system, known as an I.L.S. The I.L.S. that the small plane, a Piper Comanche, had been following through rain and fog on its approach to the airport was taken out of service right after the plane made a wheels-down landing on iced-over Rye Lake, about a mile from the airport. The pilot, the only person on board, was unhurt. The F.A.A. put the I.L.S. back in operation late yesterday morning without the prior consultation it had promised.

New York City's water consumption has decreased dramatically since last fall, when Mayor Koch first asked New Yorkers to conserve water because of the drought. As rain continued to fall throughout the metropolitan area for the second consecutive day yesterday, raising reservoirs to their highest levels since October, Environmental Protection Department figures indicated that the city was consuming 196 million fewer gallons of water a day than at this time last year. ''We have been talking to people in the Southwest and on the West Coast, where droughts are much more common phenomena, and it is our distinct impression that the conservation response on the part of New Yorkers is much more dramatic and has come about much quicker than any other campaign that we know about across the country,'' Peter Barrett, a spokesman for the city's Environmental Protection Department, said yesterday. City officials are somewhat wary of giving New Yorkers this good report card for fear they will then relax their efforts. Officials are also afraid that people will look at the rain and think that the drought is over.

In a formal response to President Reagan's economic package, Congressional Democrats said today that they would propose major revisions in the President's tax plan and lesser changes in his proposal for $41.4 billion in budget cuts. The Democrats said in televised remarks that their party regarded the President's proposal, which would provide a 10-percent-a-year tax cut over three years, as inflationary and inequitable and preferred a cut that they said would more effectively increase productivity and jobs. They also expressed concern that the budget cuts were tilted toward the rich at the expense of the poor. But the Democrats praised President Reagan's ''initiative,'' acknowledged that he had presented a bold new plan, and welcomed his offer of a partnership with Democrats and Republicans in Congress. ''There is much in the President's program that most of us can enthusiastically embrace,'' said Representative Jim Wright, Democrat of Texas, the House majority leader.

Jose Napoleon Duarte, the President of El Salvador's ruling junta, said today that despite the debate in Washington over military aid, economic aid was more important to his country. Mr. Duarte said in an interview that the economic crisis caused by the guerrilla war was a greater threat than the Marxist guerrillas. He said the junta's economic and social changes over the last year were part of a political strategy that was winning the war for the Government by turning the populace away from the guerrillas. U.S. Sees Soviet Thrust The Salvadoran leader's comments came as the Reagan Administration pressed a campaign to show that its decision to increase military aid to El Salvador was based on evidence that the shipment of tons of arms to the insurgents was part of a major Soviet thrust into Central America. There were also reports from Washington that the Pentagon considered the Salvadoran armed forces ill-prepared to fight the guerrillas.

State controls on the prices that hotels, motels and hospitals can charge for the use of room telephones for calls within the state will end March 15. The ruling, made today by the Public Service Commission, leaves them free to charge whatever they choose. Regulations on such charges have been in effect since the 1920's. The decision does not apply to interstate calls, which are covered by Federal regulations that are scheduled to end next summer.

The main rocket engines of the space shuttle Columbia roared to full power here today in a brief but crucial test giving project officials confidence that the re-usable spacecraft, after a plague of development troubles, should be ready to fly in April. But any celebration of success was tempered by a labor walkout that struck the Kennedy Space Center 15 minutes after the test, threatening to disrupt some shuttle operations. The test firing came at 8:45 A.M., an hour behind schedule. The three engines, fueled by an explosive combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, fired for the planned 20 seconds.

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said today after his first meeting with Israel's Foreign Minister that they disagreed over whether the United States should supply Saudi Arabia with additional military equipment for the F-15 fighters it has purchased from this country. Speaking to reporters, however, Mr. Haig seemed to want to avoid a public clash involving Israel and Saudi Arabia, two of Washington's major partners in the Middle East. He said that on the F-15 issue, ''clearly there are differences, as we would anticipate, and we hope to work them out.'' Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who is expected to meet President Reagan Tuesday, said that he had ''explained clearly our position,'' which is that Israel opposes augmentation of an Arab nation's offensive arms.

Festooning his remarks with quotations from a British anti-slavery crusader and Abraham Lincoln, the South African official who by law has vast powers to regulate the lives of the black majority unveiled a package of legislation late last year that, he said, marked the beginning of an irreversible process of betterment for blacks who have managed to establish themselves in urban areas. With the irrepressible optimism that is his political stock in trade, Pieter G. Koornhof evidently hoped to be seen as a great emancipator. In many respects, he contended, the legislation would put urban blacks on a par with whites when it came to freedom of movement in the labor market and in South Africa as a whole. South African racial law is vast and labyrinthian, boobytrapped with legal definitions of ''qualified'' and ''disqualified'' persons, their ''bona fide dependents'' and ''authorized accommodation,'' which require specialists to determine whether a man has a right to live with his wife in a house in an area where he can also get what is defined as ''regular employment.'' Since not all wives are ''bona fide'' and not all houses ''authorized,'' the specialists must closely follow the regulations and administrative practices of the Ministry of Cooperation and Development, which Mr. Koornhof heads, to be alert for new interpretations.

Members of the Communist Party, taking part in meetings throughout the country, are raising demands for more democracy and other changes to liberalize the party itself, a movement that could have far-reaching consequences for the future of Polish Communism. The demands range from matters of procedure - such as insistence upon secret and fair elections for all party positions - to ideological issues. In Gdansk, where the local party organization has been radicalized by worker riots in 1970 and the strikes last summer, and where the mood for change far outstrips that in the rest of the country, there is even sentiment for scrapping ''democratic centralism.'' This was Lenin's key concept of political control: once a decision has been made, the Central Committee leadership has the right to demand compliance by lower party echelons.

Peter William Sutcliffe stood before three British magistrates today and listened in silence as they charged him with the 13 ''Yorkshire Ripper'' murders and seven attempted murders that terrorized the women of northern England for six years. The 35-year-old truck driver was not asked to plead and said nothing at the 15-minute hearing.