ZCZC
BCN-28
SAUDIARABIA-OPEC-QUOTAS
Saudi Arabia hopes OPEC ministers to agree on adjustment of quotas
VIENNA, June 22, 2018 (BSS/TASS) – Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih
hopes that the meeting of the ministers of OPEC in Vienna today will result
in an agreement on adjustment of oil production quotas. Talking to reporters
on Friday he said:
“Today we have consultations with the OPEC ministers. Hopefully, we will
come up with an agreement that we will bring compliance back to 1.2 mln
barrels.”
According to him, the OPEC ministers discussed the mechanism of coming back
to the initial level of oil production reduction.
It is expected that production growth may begin in July, but “in practice
it will take time,” Al-Falih noted. According to the Saudi minister only by
the end of summer “we will see more crude hitting the market.”
He reiterated that an increase in production of 1 million barrels is “more
nominal” figure and the effective production “will be based on the countries’
ability to produce oil”.
“As we know some countries are unable to meet production targets. They are
given additional volumes to produce but they cannot produce their current
volumes,” the minister said.
Energy Ministers of the countries involved in the OPEC+oil production cut
deal are meeting in Vienna on Friday and Saturday. The main topic on the
agenda is mitigation of the oil production restrictions.
Iran, Iraq and Venezuela oppose the adjustment of quotas and threatened to
veto this decision. Iran believes that other members of the alliance simply
want to distribute its share among themselves. The production in Venezuela is
rapidly decreasing due to the economic crisis in the country. Since the early
2017 it fell from 2.3 million barrels per day to 1.4 million barrels. Iraq
has free production capacities in a politically unstable region.
The OPEC + agreement, which unites 24 countries, has been in force since
the beginning of 2017. At the same time, over the past few months, the plan
on oil production reduction has been overfulfilled, in particular due to
declining production in Venezuela and several African countries. For example,
as of May 1, the level of compliance with the quotas reached 150%, which
means that the participants in the deal reduced production by 2.7 million
barrels per day instead of 1.8 million barrels (to the level of October
2016), as it was stipulated in the agreement.
BSS/TASS/HR/1410