“I do not expect the OPEC meeting in September to agree any freeze or affect the oil market in any significant way. The environment is not that conducive to a freeze”.
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Generally, countries with sizeable financial assets, such as the Persian Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates), are affected to a lesser degree than other oil-producing countries, such as Iraq, Nigeria, and Venezuela, that do not have large financial reserves, EIA stated.
Iran lost its position as OPEC’s second-largest producer after the USA and European Union tightened sanctions on its economy in 2012.
He said the “market is moving in the right direction” already.
Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet on the sidelines of the International Energy Forum (IEF), which groups producers and consumers, in Algeria on September 26-28.
International Brent crude oil futures LCOc1 were trading at $49.54 per barrel at 0043 GMT (8.43 p.m. ET), down 38 cents from their previous close.
“Oil can trade at more that US$50 a barrel by the end of this year even without a freeze as markets continue to balance”, Fabio Scacciavillani, chief economist of the Oman Investment Fund, said in a television interview Monday on ‘Bloomberg Markets Middle East.’ “OPEC countries need the income”.
Another interesting fall out of the current market glut has been a drop in the USA shale output.
“In general, Iran prefers more actions from the OPEC side rather than just freezing at the maximum production level of all members”.
Although the comments of the Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih late on Thursday underlined that rather than making physical intervention, the fundamentals of demand and supply needed to be allowed to take care of the oil markets did dampen some enthusiasm, yet, the overall sentiments today seem much more positive than at the beginning of the month.
Zanganeh said Iran had no role in instability of the oil market, as the crisis happened when Tehran’s exports were less than 1 MMbbl/d. Iran should be let to recoup its share of global sales, he said. “When the instability occurred in the market [in 2014, ] Iran’s oil exports were less than one million barrels per day”.
Any decision to stabilise the market will require the full participation of all OPEC members and major suppliers from outside the group, Al Mazrouei said. Its total output has risen from as low as 1 million barrels a day under sanctions to 3.6 million in July, not far from Iran’s pre-sanctions output level of 4 million.
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Tehran refused to join an attempt in April to freeze output at January levels, scuppering those talks because Saudi Arabia said it wanted all producers to join the initiative.
