OPEC Members Discussing Whether to Hold an Emergency Meeting, Kuwait Says
ByMar 8, 2011
www.bloomberg.com/news
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OPEC members are discussing whether to hold an emergency meeting and any decision on increasing oil output would be taken then, Kuwait’s oil minister said.
“I’ve talked to Abdalla El-Badri in this regard and he is calling everybody and making a consensus on whether we’ll need an OPEC meeting, an urgent meeting,” Sheikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah told reporters in Kuwait City today. El-Badri is the secretary general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
“We have to find out at the meeting whether there is a need for an increase or not,” the Kuwaiti minister said.
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members have pledged to ensure adequate supply to the market as violence in Libya reduced output from Africa’s third-largest crude producer. OPEC is also under pressure to assuage soaring fuel prices after New York- traded oil rallied yesterday to $105.44 a barrel, the highest closing price since September 2008 and was at $105.01 as of 1:51 p.m. London time.
“We will call everybody and they will decide if there is a need for a meeting,” the Kuwaiti oil minister said.
Asked if the market needs more oil from OPEC, he replied: “Not yet.” Questioned whether Kuwait will raise production by April, he said: “It depends on the meeting, it has to be a collective decision.”
Libyan Output Cut
Libya has cut output by as much as 1 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency. The North African country pumped 1.39 million barrels a day on average in February, down from 1.59 million the previous month, according to Bloomberg estimates. OPEC supplies 40 percent of the world’s oil. Still, exports continue from some parts of the country, including the eastern port of Tobruk, Libyan oil company officials said yesterday in Benghazi.
The organization currently has no meeting planned aside from a conference already scheduled for June 8 in Vienna, according to an OPEC official.
An emergency meeting can be called by the group’s secretary general in consultation with its president, according to the OPEC Statute. Iranian oil minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi, who currently holds the OPEC presidency, said on Feb. 28 that there is no need for OPEC to increase supply, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Some OPEC members and producers outside the group have made up for the reduction in crude shipments from Libya, Qatari Energy Minister Mohammed Saleh al Sada said. “There was hardly any effect” on supply because of the Libyan unrest, he said at a conference in Doha.
Tobruk Shipments Continue
Crude-oil loading and shipments by Libya’s Arabian Gulf Oil Co. from the rebel-held eastern port of Tobruk have been unaffected by unrest, according to officials at the company.
A tanker was loaded yesterday with 600,000 barrels of crude, Hassan Bolifa, head of the emergency committee at the company and member of the management committee, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Benghazi yesterday.
“Until now, the shipment of crude from the Tobruk terminal has been as scheduled,” he said.
In the past five days a Chinese tanker loaded 1 million barrels from the port, he said. No other tankers are scheduled to load this month under previous agreements signed by the parent company, state-run National Oil Corp., which is managed by officials under Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Bolifa said.
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