Oil ministers from leading Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) nations have expressed hopes that crude oil prices will halt their recent drop and rebalance early next year, when a new deal to reduce oil output takes effect. Both U.S. crude and Brent have shed more than 36 percent from early October to trade at $54 (47 euros) per barrel, amid worries about oversupply and weak global demand.
However, president of OPEC and UAE Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said that the surplus in the oil market was small compared to 2017 and expected it to vanish in one or two months. Mazrouei said “Based on available figures, we have around 26 million barrels of surplus ... compared to 340 million barrels in early 2017. I think that we can easily do with this surplus and reach market rebalance in one or two months... in the first quarter of next year.” He noted that there has been higher than anticipated supply on the market in recent months, as US sanctions on Iran have had a less pronounced effect on the country's oil exports than had been expected.
Iraq's Oil Minister Thamer al-Ghadhban has stated that there is a consensus among OPEC and non-OPEC producers to comply with the new agreement to trim output in a bid to stabilise the market. He also said that the new agreement is valid for six months and the ministers will meet in April to assess the impact of the cuts. Besides, he believed that that the new measures taken by producers will stop the slide in oil prices.
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