Abu Dhabi: The UAE energy minister Suhail Al Mazroui said that production cut agreement between Opec and non-Opec members is working perfectly and any talk about exiting from the deal would be a mere speculation.
“We will announce a strategy in June meeting and that doesn’t mean that we will exit. We will come up with a strategy. What is that strategy? No one can tell you the shape or form how it is going to be done prior to the meeting,” said Al Mazroui speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Bloomberg Invest Abu Dhabi conference.
Opec and non-Opec members led by Russia are cutting oil production by about 1.8 million barrels per day to help lower global oil inventories and support prices.
The deal which was to expire in March but has been extended until the end of 2018 at a recent meeting of the group in Vienna.
He said the deal was successful in reducing global oil inventories of more than 180 million barrels of oil since it was implemented at the start of the year.
“We are moving towards market rebalancing horizon. Next year is going to be a better year and expect healthy demand like in 2017. The compliance for the deal has been remarkably high.”
On shale oil production, he said there’s going to be a moderate growth but it will not offset the production cut agreement reached between Opec and non-Opec members.
“We need production from everywhere including shale oil production to meet the growing demand.”
US oil production that has been rising steadily during the past thirteen months. Last week US production hit a record of 9.7 million barrels per day.
Rig count in the US has gone up by two to 931 last week with oil rigs up 2 to 751 and gas rigs unchanged at 180.
