Reuters reports that Saudi Arabia doesn’t want oil prices to grow too fast. This is what Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia Khalid A. Al-Falih told during his speech at the UN Climate Change Conference 2017 in Bonn, Germany.
On top of that, the minister expects the global market of crude oil to stay oversupplied in 2018. That’s why the Saudis support the OPEC’s idea to extend the OPEC+ agreement for the next year. For those of you who don’t know, the decision to extend the OPEC+ deal is expected to be made during the forthcoming OPEC summit scheduled for November 30th in Vienna, Austria. the international community expects the deal to be extended for 6 months this time. However, the Saudis assume that the deal won’t let the oil exporters achieve the expected goals by March 2018, which is why they advocate the idea of extending the deal for the rest of 2018.
Once again, the Saudi Arabian minister claims that the Saudis don’t want a too rapid price rally in the global oil market since this may shock the consumers. Also, they assume that a way out of the OPEC+ agreement should be gradual so as to let the importers get used to it.
While celebrating the success achieved by the OPEC+ agreement, the minister said that thanks to the deal the oil inventories had dropped by 50% relative to the expected level to let oil prices set a new 24-month high.
It’s interesting to note that the OPEC+ deal extension is supported by most of the participants. That’s already been confirmed by Russia, the UAE, Oman, and Iraq.
Brent oil was trading above $62/b on November 17th. That’s confirmed by the chart below, courtesy of FortFS:
