JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday that Saudi Arabia had kept its promise to increase oil production capacity over the past three years.

Cheney was in Jerusalem after visiting Saudi Arabia last week where he reviewed the situation with Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim al-Naimi.

Riyadh had told the United States it was expanding oil production capacity three years ago when it was producing about 10.5 million barrels per day.

"They said they would add 2 million barrels a day in production over the next four or five years, through the end of (2009), and they've kept their word," Cheney said.

When President George W. Bush visited Saudi Arabia in January, he called for OPEC to increase production, but the crude oil exporters' group decided to hold production steady.

A senior U.S. administration official, on condition of anonymity, said that while Saudi Arabia was expanding its oil production capacity by about 20 percent, U.S. production was probably declining.

"It's a little hard to go berate others to produce more when we won't produce everything we can ourselves," the official said.

The U.S. official said Saudi oil production capacity would be at 12.5 million barrels per day by the end of 2009, and that Saudi Arabia had invested $90 billion to expand capacity.

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Editing by Michael Winfrey)

LIKE IT?  LET OTHERS KNOW