OPEC Secretary General: OPEC+ Deserves Credit For Oil Market Stability

The OPEC+ group deserves to be given credit for the way it has handled oil market stability in recent months, OPEC Secretary General Haitham told Reuters on Monday.

“Due recognition should be given for our constructive and positive role in supporting global market stability including to remind ourselves that the G20 and major consumers around the world commended us for our historical actions taken since 2020,” Al Ghais told Reuters on the sidelines of the ongoing India Energy Week conference.

OPEC+ decided in October last year to reduce their target oil production by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) from November onwards. Yet, the actual cut is estimated to have been around 1 million bpd. The cut is in force until December 2023 or until the alliance decides otherwise.

Last week, the OPEC+ panel recommending policy actions, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), decided that the group should keep production targets and quotas unchanged in a widely-expected move considering the uncertainties in both supply and demand.

OPEC’s crude oil production is estimated to have dropped in January by around 60,000 bpd due to cuts by top producer Saudi Arabia which may have been steeper than the Kingdom’s quota, a survey carried out by Bloomberg showed last week.

Still, OPEC and the OPEC+ group, which includes Russia and a dozen other non-OPEC producers, are pumping crude oil at levels well below the collective target the OPEC+ alliance set as of November 2022.

“We believe there is great confidence and trust in the OPEC+ group and its decisions where we have proven time and again that we are ready to act immediately and respond to the dynamic nature of the market,” Al Ghais told Reuters.

Last month, OPEC’s secretary general said in a Bloomberg interview that signs of cautious optimism about a recovery in economies and oil demand had emerged.

OPEC is determined to do “whatever it takes” to keep the oil market balanced in 2023, Al Ghais told Bloomberg Television in the middle of January.