PARIS, 10 May 2003 — The oil market is currently awash with crude and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries needs to cut production at an upcoming meeting, OPEC President Abdullah ibn Hamad Al-Attiyah said in an interview published yesterday.
“There is too much oil on the market and that has a bad influence on prices which have fallen dramatically,” Al-Attiyah told French newspaper Le Monde.
“The next meeting of OPEC members is planned for June 11 in Doha. OPEC is going to need to make new cuts in its production. It’s on that date that we will decide by how much,” said Al-Attiyah, who is also the Qatari oil minister.
Prices have slumped since an unexpected decision by OPEC in April to raise output ceilings from June 1 while also clamping down on the flouting of quotas.
Al-Attiyah acknowledged that OPEC’s decision in April caused some “confusion”. “There’s been some confusion. We knew that certain countries such as Venezuela, Iraq and Nigeria had increased production voluntarily. We closed our eyes because we wanted to help the stability of the oil market. “Our aim was to reduce this overproduction and not to increase quotas,” he added.
He said that OPEC alone could not bring stability to the oil market without the cooperation of non-members such as Angola, Mexico, Norway and Russia.
However, Oil prices surged yesterday. The price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for June delivery shot up 69 cents per barrel to $25.34, having also risen 54 cents the day before. In New York, light sweet crude June-dated futures gained 77 cents per barrel to $27.75 in early trading.
