SINGAPORE - OPEC members are happy with crude oil prices and top exporter Saudi Arabia said on Monday any additional demand for crude would be met.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar pump nearly half of OPEC’s output and form a powerful bloc within the producer group.
“We hope the price stays where it is now,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi told reporters in Singapore, where he is attending an industry conference.
Producers would pump more oil if they saw demand for it, Naimi said. “Demand is driven by need and if there is need for additional supplies, it will be provided.”
Saudi Arabia is OPEC’s top oil producer and the only member with significant spare capacity to boost supplies. The kingdom has more than 4 million barrels per day of idle capacity.
US crude traded near $82 on Monday, slightly above the $70 to $80 range that Naimi has said was ideal for producers and consumers. Prices at that level are high enough to encourage investment and low enough to spur growth, OPEC ministers have said.
The $70 to $80 range was “very comfortable for consumers and producers for the time being,” Qatar’s Oil Minister Abdulla Al-Attiyah said on Monday.
Tough to predict OPEC supply policy
Naimi did not comment on what he expected OPEC ministers to decide at their next meeting to discuss supply policy in Ecuador in December, but fellow Gulf producer Kuwait said on Sunday it expected no change in policy at that meeting.
“I don’t expect anything,” said Kuwait’s Oil Minister Shaikh Ahmad al-Abdullah al-Sabah.
If OPEC leaves supply unchanged in December, it would mark two years of steady policy. OPEC announced record cuts of 4.2 million bpd in December 2008 as the world economy slowed and burned less oil, and members have adjusted supply only informally since then.
Attiyah said it was tough to predict the producer group’s supply policy for 2011 due to uncertainty around the global economy.
Quotas
OPEC has for a long time side-stepped a potentially difficult debate on how to realign output targets. Iraq is the group’s only member outside the quota system after years of sanctions and war, but with big plans for expansion, OPEC would probably need to bring Baghdad back into the fold.
Iraq expected any discussion with OPEC on an output quota would come only after it was producing around 4 million to 5 million barrels per day (bpd), Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said in an interview on Sunday.
The country could reach 4 million bpd in 3 years, Shahristani said. Iraq pumps around 2.4 million bpd, but has signed deals with international oil firms that would take output to more than 12 million bpd in just six to seven years.
If that is achieved, Baghdad could challenge Riyadh for the title of holder of the world’s largest oil production capacity.
Angola’s oil minister reiterated on Sunday that it was looking for a higher OPEC quota. As in Iraq, oil is the source of funding for redevelopment from decades of war.
“We need resources to recover,” Angola’s Oil Minister Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos said on Sunday.