Minister: Russia to partake in March meeting of OPEC+ committee

MOSCOW/NUR-SULTAN, Mar 11 (PRIME) – Russia will definitely participate in a meeting of the OPEC+ technical monitoring committee later in March, Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Wednesday.

When asked whether Russia would be represented at the March 18 committee meeting, he said,” Definitely yes. We will have our representatives there.”

But Novak has not yet discussed prolongation of negotiations under the OPEC+ format with Saudi Arabia’s former Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih, he said.

Participants of the OPEC+ agreement continue working together within the format under the long-term cooperation charter.

“The format of our relations has remained under the charter, it has not changed. Our colleagues and we are still monitoring the situation and we will continue discussions, because the market situation is important for all export-oriented countries,” he said.

Russia would also make no changes to the mechanism designed for keeping domestic fuel prices flat in spite of contraction in oil prices. The mechanism is still working, he added.

Saudi Arabian state oil company Saudi Aramco said in a statement that it received an order from the country’s Energy Ministry to raise its maximum production capacities to 13 million barrels a day from 12 million barrels a day.

Nurlan Nogayev, Kazakhstan’s energy minister, told reporters that the country stands for consensus in the OPEC+ deal that satisfies everyone. Kazakhstan is interested in stable oil prices, he said.

In November 2016, OPEC and non-OPEC states including Russia first decided to reduce their oil output to rebalance the market, and agreed on additional reduction in December 2018. In July, they prolonged the deal until April 2020. But on March 6, the countries failed to agree on parameters of the deal or on its prolongation, so reduction quotas will be terminated on April 1.

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