Opec to remain global central bank of oil

“Gone are the days of 1970s when these things used to be discussed; Opec is no more an oil-producing club but now they also look into the interests of consumers. Opec is accommodative of our view,” Pradhan said during a panel discussion.

Need for 1mbpd cut

Al Falih said that as per technical analysis, there is a need to cut oil supply by 1 million barrels a day as demand will dwindle amidst a slowdown expected in the global economy. This will also help balance the supplydemand equilibrium. The Saudi minister had announced on Thursday that Riyadh will reduce supply by 0.5 million barrels a day in December.

“If all things remain equal, and they almost certainly will not as things will change, then the technical analysis we saw yesterday showed that there is need to reduce supply from October levels of a million barrels,” Al Falih said.

“The consensus is that we need to do whatever it takes to balance the market. If that means trimming supplies by a million [bpd], we will.”

Oil price

“Oil price fluctuation is a result of market circumstances and other conditions outside the remit of our industry such as geopolitical challenges and global trade war risks. We need to create market conditions to make it a win-win situation for producers and consumers. We want to enable world economic growth to be healthy,” Al Mazrouei said. “Sometime the markets overreact and we cannot control the actions or decisions taken by heads of state. So, we will continue doing our part and keep the Opec together,” he said.

He warned that when oil prices are too low, producing nations stop investing in the energy sector, as was the case in 2014-15 when oil prices had dropped sharply. “We saw trillion of dollars of investments shying away due to very low oil prices.”