Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister said on Monday that OPEC’s deal to limit oil production with non-OPEC allies, including Russia, could last as long as possible.
“Now we have a bigger family, which is OPEC plus,” Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, the new Saudi energy minister, told an audience of delegates at the 24th World Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi.
“And very soon we will celebrate the charter that will continue putting us together, so until death do us part,” he said.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has replaced Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih with former Deputy Minister Prince Abdul Aziz and has years of experience in the Saudi OPEC delegation, it was announced on Sunday.
Prince Abdulaziz was part of the OPEC team that negotiated the current deal with non-OPEC producers (known as OPEC +) to limit production reached in late 2016. The deal was extended in July to March 2020.
The Kremlin said on Monday it saw no impact on the so-called “OPEC +” in the wake of a change of leadership at the Saudi Energy Ministry and expected “to work as usual,” Reuters reported.
Expecting that Saudi Arabia’s approach to the so-called “OPEC +” will continue as before, oil prices strengthened on Monday. Brent crude traded at $61.99 a barrel, while WTI was trading at $56.99 a barrel.
The OPEC+ alliance’s policy to curb production has had to cope with an oversupply of US shale oil producers and a possible drop in demand amid US-China trade tariffs seen as undermining global growth.
Prince Abdul Aziz said he was “by nature an optimist” and that the “jury is out” when it came to oil demand forecasts, adding that if he took the IEA’s forecast to slow demand, he might “probably be on Prozac all the time”
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