February 21, 1981

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.