Riyadh – Arabs Today
Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Industry and Mineral Resources, Khaled al-Faleh, said that the global demand for oil will grow by 1.5 million barrels this year, pointing out that Saudi Arabia has reduced its production by more than it pledged in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ agreement, recording less than 10 million bpd.
The OPEC's historic agreement with non-member producers to cut output by 1.8 million barrels a day to reduce oversupply has brought the cartel into greater alignment than ever before, he said at the CERAWeek conference in Houston.
Saudi Arabia will only accept limited intervention by OPEC in oil markets, Al-Falih said. However, Saudi Arabia will maintain its policy of managing production only for "a restricted period of time," such as to alleviate the impacts of financial crisis, economic recession, Falih said.
"History has also demonstrated that intervention in response to structural shifts is largely ineffective, and I believe we in the organization have learned that lesson. That's why Saudi Arabia does not support OPEC intervening to alleviate the impacts of long-term structural imbalances," he said.
The oil market is in the middle of one of these structural shifts, with U.S. shale oil production having flooded the market and contributed to a more than two-year crude price downturn.