VIENNA, 28 July — The 11-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) will hold a major ministerial meeting on Sept. 18 this year. They will map out the future oil strategy after carefully studying forecasts for the next two quarters when oil consumption increases in the northern hemisphere’s winter.
“Depending on the data, the OPEC will decide to increase production, reduce it or maintain the current ceiling”, said Dr. Adnan A. Shihabeldin, director of OPEC’s Research Division and in charge of OPEC Secretariat in Vienna.
Dr. Shihabeldin also spoke of the Kingdom’s ability to cover any incremental global oil demand and oil prices and pledged to preserve market stability.
OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE together with non-OPEC countries Bahrain and Oman hold 45 percent of the world’s oil reserves.
Of production policies, Dr. Shihabeldin said that the OPEC countries have currently a spare capacity to produce six million bpd. This excess helps to meet emergency demands. Global oil demand seems to indicate variable patterns in future. The International Energy Agency (IEA), he said, has been revising its forecasts downward every month because of the global recession and the slow pace of recovery.
He said that the OPEC has also been studying various other forecasts to decide whether to increase or decrease oil production. This is in addition to a move to unify their efforts with major non-OPEC countries. The OPEC World Energy Model (OWEM), uses sophisticated future-modeling to asses movements in demand and supply in multiple economic scenarios over the next twenty years.
These models, he said, are constantly being updated. They are particularly valuable for OPEC member states. “They need to expand their production capacities to meet the future demand in the longer run,” said the OPEC official adding that “this expansion will be conducted in an orderly fashion but there will be sufficient room for all producers including non-OPEC countries to have their share in global oil output.”
“In fact, the non-OPEC countries have been closely involved in the process of dialogue and several non-OPEC nations have been attending the OPEC ministerial conferences for many years as observers. The relationship between the two sides has greatly improved over the last couple of years and much of the success we have attained in restoring market balance and prices has been due to joint action,” he said. In reply to a question about the oil prices, he said, “we are quite satisfied with the level of international oil prices especially the OPEC basket, which is hovering around $25 a barrel mark at present.
