Minister says discusses long-term cooperation with Saudi colleague

ANKARA, Apr 3 (PRIME) -- Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak confirmed on Tuesday discussion of long-term cooperation with Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia Khalid Al-Falih after termination of an OPEC plus nonmember oil output reduction deal.

“Me and my colleague, Mr. Al-Falih, the energy minister, have preliminarily discussed the need to think about a mechanism of cooperation after completion of the OPEC plus agreement for a longer term so that the mechanism applied now in the framework of market rebalancing showed effectiveness both multilaterally and bilaterally,” Novak said.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are also discussing cooperation between the agreement participants after deal termination. “There are various ways to cooperate, and we talked about that earlier, maybe OPEC and non-OPEC countries could hold regular meetings, maybe some additional formats, in particular, perhaps an organization which could cooperate with OPEC and non-OPEC countries,” Novak said.

He also said that Russia plans to fulfill the OPEC agreement by 100% in April and the first days of the month have shown a full compliance.

In November 2016, OPEC and non-OPEC states agreed to reduce their oil production to rebalance the market. Russia joined the agreement in December 2016 with a promise to cut output by 300,000 barrels daily compared with the level of October 2016. The agreement was prolonged until the end of 2018 in November 2017.

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