OPEC wants rivals to honor output accord

Author: 
By Omar Al-Zobidy, Arab News Staff
Publication Date: 
Sat, 2002-03-02 03:00

RIYADH/LONDON, 2 March — OPEC wants rival producers to stick with a global output cut until 2003 and will keep its own production at current low levels if they do so, Secretary-General Ali Rodriguez was quoted as saying yesterday. Speaking ahead of a crucial trip to Moscow to discuss an output accord, Rodriguez said producers inside and outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would have to wait until demand picks up before they could start pumping larger crude volumes again.

“Cooperation is necessary to maintain stability in the market until well into 2003, by which time sufficient demand may have developed to allow both OPEC and non-OPEC producers to relax reductions,” the group’s OPECNA news agency quoted Rodriguez as saying. The agency said that Rodriguez had committed to keeping output steady throughout 2002 and had expressed confidence that Russia would show the same restraint.

Alexander Sultanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister for Middle Eastern affairs, meanwhile, affirmed his country’s commitment to honor the accord with OPEC on production cut, saying it was essential to maintain global oil market stability.

He refuted reports that there were disputes between Moscow and the organization on the production quota. “These reports are baseless,” Sultanov said and emphasized his country’s cooperation with the organization.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, Sultanov said: “Some countries are spreading such reports about Russia because of their competition with our country. There is good cooperation between Russia and the OPEC to protect the interests of both producers and consumers.”

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