OPEC Denies Controlling Oil Market

The global oil market is not controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, a group of 14 nations that produce around 40% of the world's crude, OPEC's secretary-general said.

In an interview with Trend News Agency, Mohammed Barkindo added that the industry has many stakeholders and "the focus for us all should be on a stable and balanced market".

"Since OPEC was founded in 1960, its overall goal has been oil market stability. It is not only the best type of market for OPEC, but for all stakeholders. This includes producers, contractors, investors and consumers. This will continue to be the organization’s goal on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis," he said.

Talking about the effectiveness of the OPEC oil output cut deal, the secretary-general said there are clear signs that the production adjustments initiated by 24 OPEC and non-OPEC producing nations in the landmark "Declaration of Cooperation" and the high conformity levels to these adjustments are helping the market to rebalance.

"We have seen the process of destocking, both onshore and offshore, gather pace in recent months. The most recent data for August 2017 show commercial oil inventories of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development–OECD countries—to be around 170 million barrels above the five-year average, down from around 340 million barrels at the start of 2017," Barkindo said.

"Industry data for 2017 suggest that crude in floating storage has fallen by more than 30 million barrels since the beginning of the year," he added.

In December 2016 in Vienna, 11 non-OPEC countries, including Azerbaijan, agreed to curtail oil output jointly by 558,000 barrels per day. The agreement was signed for the first half of 2017.

On May 25, OPEC members agreed to extend the production adjustments for a further period of nine months, with effect from July 1, 2017.

The reductions will be on the same terms as those agreed in November.