Producers committed to balancing oil ‘mkt’, says UAE energy minister

$11 trillion investment needed to meet future global energy demand: ADNOC CEO

ABU DHABI, Sept 9, (RTRS): United Arab Emirates’ Minister of Energy and Industry Suhail al-Mazrouei said on Sunday that OPEC and non-OPEC producers are “committed” to achieving oil market balance.

Asked about possible deeper production cuts, the minister told a news conference in Abu Dhabi that he was not concerned about current oil prices, rather the level of oil inventories.

Politics and global trade tensions are affecting the market more than demand and supply, Mazrouei said, but he was quick to rule out hasty steps influenced by the trade war between the United States and China.

“The fear of slower (oil) demand is only going to happen if that tension is escalating and I am personally hopeful that is not the case,” Mazrouei told Reuters later on Sunday.

The joint ministerial monitoring committee meeting, known as JMMC, will be held on Thursday in Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia and Russia are members of the JMMC, which includes other major oil producers who took part in a global supply pact last year, including Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Nigeria and Kazakhstan.

Mazrouei said the UAE will support any decision taken in consensus within OPEC and its allies on

further oil production cuts, emphasising his country’s full compliance with the existing deal.

Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) said that the long-term outlook for global energy demand was “robust” and that investment of $11 trillion in oil and gas was needed to keep up with projected demand.

United Arab Emirates minister of state and ADNOC Group CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber also said that the state oil company was on

track to raise its oil production capacity to 4 million barrels per day by 2020 and 5 million bpd by 2030. The UAE, the third-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, behind Saudi Arabia and Iraq, pumps around 3 million barrels per day.

“In the short term ... global economic uncertainties are creating market volatility and impacting energy demand. But in the long term, the outlook is robust,” Jaber told an energy conference in Abu

Dhabi on Monday.

He said population growth and rise of the middle class was expected to lead to greater spending power and that, as a result, more than three times the amount of energy currently consumed by Europe would be added to demand in the next two decades.

“To meet this demand ... we will need an inclusive response that integrates and optimizes a fully diversified energy mix,” he said, adding that the world would still rely on oil and gas as the majority

source of energy for decades to come, which would require investment of $11 trillion to keep up with demand.

The CEO said ADNOC is unlocking “vast reserves” of natural gas by tapping into gas caps, undeveloped reservoirs and unconventional resources.

He said ADNOC launched the region’s first commercial scale carbon capture utilisation and storage facility in 2016 and plans to expand the programme by six times over the next decade.