Saudi oil minister urges Opec+ to keep building consensus

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman attends the International Petroleum Technology Conference (IPTC) in Riyadh on Monday.

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said that Opec+ must stay together for the long-term stability of the oil market. “We need to keep this consensus building approach to be with us permanently because without it we will lose sight of our collective ambition,” Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at an energy conference in Riyadh on Sunday. “Ask any producer of oil and gas today, if it were not for Opec+ would they be the chairmen and the CEOs of today? And the answer: they would have vanished.” The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies have so far been sticking to their plan to gradually roll back output cuts, adding 400,000 barrels a day each month until September 2022. The group has been meeting on a monthly basis to closely monitor the market as the world recovers from the pandemic. At the same conference on Sunday, energy ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq said the group should stick to its current agreement to keep the market balanced and avoid any surplus. “For the benefit of the whole energy market, Opec+ should sustain the current agreement and any dramatic change could cause an imbalance,” Iraq Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said, adding that the group should maintain the current production pact to keep the market balanced and avoid surplus. The group has consistently rebuffed pressure to pump significantly more oil, deciding instead to stick with cautious monthly increases. “We are on a journey to attend to the market by gradually increasing production and we think that this plan is attending to the supply and demand,” Suhail al-Mazrouei, the UAE’s Energy Minister, said. “I think our plan is working and I don’t think that the market is hugely under-supplied.”