Barkindo: OPEC+ may change output plan in Dec on falling demand

ABU DHABI, Nov 12 (PRIME) -- The OPEC plus nonmember deal participants may have to change their production strategies after a December meeting of the compliance committee, which said it sees preconditions for an oil glut, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo said after a meeting of the OPEC ministerial committee on November 11.

“The committee has analyzed the current supply and demand figures on the oil market and saw that the forecasts for 2019 indicate a higher supply than necessary in the world, taking into account the current uncertainties,” he said.

An expected economic slowdown in 2019 can undermine oil demand and widen the gap between supply and demand.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia will coordinate its activities to balance the oil market with the other deal participants and that oil output in November is to be a bit lower than in October. He did not rule out prolongation of the agreement.

Novak said that the forecasts made by the committee envisage a misbalance between the supply and demand by 1–1.4 million barrels a day in 2019.

In November 2016, OPEC and non-OPEC states agreed to reduce their oil production to rebalance the market. Russia joined the agreement to cut the output by 300,000 barrels daily as compared with the level of October 2016. In 2017, the deal was prolonged until the end of 2018. In June, the participants decided to raise the output by 1 million barrels of oil per day.

According to Barkindo, the next meeting of the OPEC deal monitoring committee will take place on December 5.

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