OPEC has currently embarked upon its strategic apparatus to carry out its objectives, Fereydoun Barkeshli, president of Vienna Energy Research Group in Austria and the National Iranian Oil Company’s former general manager for OPEC and international affairs, told Trend Dec. 1.
During the Vienna meeting held Nov.30, OPEC members decided to implement a new OPEC-14 production target of 32.5mb/d, said the cartel’s website.
The decision was made in order to accelerate the ongoing drawdown of the stock overhang and bring the oil market rebalancing forward.
“This conference reminded me of OPEC Conferences during 1980’s and 1990’s – tough, long and extensive,” Barkeshli said, adding that members of the organization had earlier met at ministerial levels two times in Doha, once in Algiers and a last time in Istanbul.
“In the meantime several high level and senior experts had met many times in OPEC Secretariat and in each other capitals,” he added.
The 14 OPEC members finally decided to cut down production to 32.5 million barrels per day (mbpd) from Jan. 1, 2017, which means the members will cut production by 1.2 mbpd, Barkeshli said.
“In the meantime, although Russia did not take part in 171st OPEC Ministerial Conference in Vienna, but remotely agreed to cut 300,000 bpd,” he added.
“Members of organization decided to monitor the market closely and evaluate it.
The ministers decided that they will form a permanent market monitoring committee supported by OPEC Secretariat to make sure that members of the organization will abide by decided quota allocation,” he said, explaining the decisions of the yesterday OPEC meeting.
Barkeshli further said that Saudi Arabia agreed to undergo the biggest slice of production cut of some 700,000 bpd.
Nevertheless, three members of the organization; namely, Iran, Libya and Nigeria still have no allocated quota and their production policy will be decided later in 2017, he added.
As such, OPEC now seems to be returning to carrying out its objectives and policies, Barkeshli said.
“However, OPEC wants to make it crystal clear that major non-OPEC producers need to cooperate in order to manage the market,” he added.
