The head of OPEC said on Thursday that he remains “confident” that the organization and outside members will stick to an agreement to cut production to help boost oil prices.
The comments by OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo of Nigeria come as the 13-member bloc and nonmembers try to stick to the landmark deal after oil prices collapsed last year, AP reported.
“I remain very confident with what I have seen in the last several months,” Barkindo said at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi. “The level of commitment from both sides ... is unparalleled.”
OPEC agreed in late November to cut its production by 1.2 million barrels a day, the first reduction agreed to by the organization since 2008. Nearly a dozen other countries pledged in December to cut an additional 558,000 barrels a day.
He added that there’s been “a high level of compliance.” However, how that compliance will be verified has yet to be determined.
Kuwaiti Oil Minister Essam al-Marzouq, who leads a five-nation OPEC committee monitoring compliance, said that should be judged on the average at the end of the six-month cut.
Al-Marzouq declined to offer any other specifics ahead of a planned committee meeting in Vienna beginning Jan. 21. However, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi pledged his country would meet its required cuts by the end of January.
Crude oil sold for over $100 a barrel in the summer of 2014, before bottoming out below $30 a barrel in January 2016. Producers acknowledged they hoped for higher prices, especially those in the Persian Gulf, whose oil-based economies have been hurting. Also hurting are the oil-dominated economies of Venezuela and Nigeria.
UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazroui also said there is “a fair movement” toward higher prices, though it is not at a price his nation would like.
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