During the meeting, Nigeria’s Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo was appointed as Secretary-General succeeding Libya’s Abdalla Salem El-Badri.
Advertisement
Saudi Arabia promised on Thursday not to flood the oil market with extra barrels as OPEC entered a heated debate about production policy, with Iran insisting on the right to raise output steeply.
OPEC members agreed in a two-day meeting that ended on Thursday in Vienna to maintain the status quo by keeping production at current levels, citing an improvement in crude oil prices.
But OPEC officials said in a press release (http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/press_room/3487.htm) that the market is “moving through the balancing process”, with prices having climbed by more than 80% since December and oil supplies in major industrialized countries having moderated.
Meanwhile, WTI crude oil futures were trading around $49.2 per barrel while Brent crude oil futures were hovering around $50.1 per barrel.
The cartel of oil exporting nations broker off the meet in Vienna, without any new agreements.
Nigeria, Algeria, Venezuela and Qatar want a ceiling setting an overall output target for OPEC, but Iran, which like all OPEC members holds a veto over decisions, said it was opposed.
Barkindo will become the new secretary-general of OPEC starting from August 1, the head of the Public Relations & Information Department at OPEC said.
At its December meeting, Opec abandoned its group production target of 30 million barrels per day, which in any case was being flouted.
OPEC flooding the market with oil hasn’t killed the American oil boom, but cheap prices have forced US oil companies to pump less.
But few people are expecting an agreement to cap production, with Iran already declaring it is unwilling to take part in any such a deal at the talks.
Oil prices continued to rise Thursday despite members of OPEC failing to agree on an output policy, BBC Business reported. “We used to have it once, and I do not know why OPEC countries decided not to have the system of state quotas”, Zanganeh told reporters. The daily production of Gabon stands at 240,000 barrels, the lowest in OPEC.
Advertisement
The US bank said that “fuelled by the lower prices, oil consumption around the world is booming on less efficient use (more sports utility vehicle sales), less substitution effects (less electric vehicle sales or more propane use instead of biomass), and more economic demand (more kilometres driven or flown)”.
