Vienna meeting agrees to boost oil output

VIENNA - The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed with Russia and other oil-producing allies on Saturday to raise output from July, with Saudi Arabia pledging a "measurable" supply boost but giving no specific numbers.

The organization had announced an OPEC-only production agreement on Friday, also without clear output targets. Benchmark Brent oil rose by $2.5 or 3.4 percent on the day to $75.55 a barrel.

OPEC did not give the details of how it would split the production increase, and did not directly state the amount by which oil production would increase.

The agreement would be implemented in July.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said OPEC and non-OPEC countries combined would pump roughly an extra 1 million barrels per day (bpd) in coming months, equal to 1 percent of global supply.

Top global exporter Saudi Arabia will increase output by hundreds of thousands of barrels, he said, with exact figures to be decided later.

"We already mobilized the Aramco machinery, before coming to Vienna, pre-empting this meeting," Falih said, referring to the Saudi state oil company.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said his country would add 200,000 bpd in the second half of this year.

Asked to what extent the decision to increase supply had been driven by pressure from Trump, Novak said: "It is obvious that we are not being driven by tweets but base our actions on deep market analysis."

OPEC and its allies have since last year been participating in a pact to cut output by 1.8 million bpd. The measure had helped rebalance the market in the past 18 months and lifted oil to around $75 per barrel from as low as $27 in 2016.

But unexpected outages in Venezuela, Libya and Angola have effectively brought supply cuts to around 2.8 million bpd in recent months.

Falih has warned the world could face a supply deficit of up to 1.8 million bpd in the second half of 2018.

Reuters - Xinhua

(China Daily 06/25/2018 page12)