Page 11 - FSUOGM Week 08 2023

FSUOGM POLICY FSUOGM

OPEC+ to stick with current deal

through 2023

OPEC OPEC+ will stick with the deal agreed in Octo- forecast following China’s relaxation of COVID-
ber until the end of the year, according to the 19 restrictions.
The de-facto head group’s de-facto head, Saudi Arabian Energy Prince Abdulaziz said: “No matter what
of the cartel said he Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman Al-Saud. trends you are looking at, if you follow the cau-
remained cautious In an interview with Energy Aspects, he said tious approach not only would you see the begin-
about Chinese demand that he remains cautious about Chinese demand ning of a positive trend to emerge but you need
forecasts. forecasts and the producer group would not to make sure that these positive signals of this
raise output oil group can’t increase output based market can be sustained.”
solely on initial signals. He added: “The Chinese economy’s unlock-
“The agreement that we struck in October is ing and because of that you will have demand
here to stay for the rest of the year. Period,” he and what have you, but we all went through
said. cycles of openings and lockdowns and therefore
The October deal saw OPEC reduce its allo- what assurances (would we have) and the world
cated production level from 26.7mn bpd by a have that none of what we went through, all of us,
‘voluntary adjustment’ of 1.27mn bpd to 25.4mn every country, will not be repeated?”
bpd, while its non-OPEC partners cut by just Meanwhile, he said that the US’ decision to
over 700,000 bpd. Saudi Arabia and Russia each release oil from its strategic petroleum reserves
made a voluntary cut of 526,000 bpd, though (SPR) last year was the fault of the Paris-based
in reality, Russian production had already been International Energy Agency (IEA), which fore-
hampered by a shrinking market for its crude cast that Russian oil production would drop
following Western restrictions on purchases. by 3mn bpd. “The IEA was responsible for it
While Russia announced last week that it because of the screaming and scaring that they
would reduce oil production by 500,000 bpd, had done on how much Russia will lose in terms
OPEC this week increased its global demand of its production,” he said. ™

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