OPEC ministers upbeat on recovery

Vienna : OPEC ministers were cautiously confident yesterday that the oil market is finally on the mend, cementing expectations that the cartel will keep crude gushing at a meeting in Vienna.

“The market is improving,” Iraq’s Deputy Oil Minister Fayyad Al Nima said a day before the bi-annual gathering of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

“The market will become better in the second half of the year,” he predicted, in comments echoed by other delegates from the 13-nation group.

The most powerful though, Saudi Arabia’s new oil minister Khaled Al Falih -- newly appointed by the dynamic young Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman -- was tight-lipped.

Suhail Al Mazrouei, United Arab Emirates oil minister, said late Tuesday that he expected 2016 to be “the year of correction”.

“The rules of the market, which is the supply and demand, are working,” he told reporters in Vienna.

Angola’s Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, oil minister, said that the price “tendency is a little bit positive”.

However, Vasconcelos also said that Angola needed the price to rise further, while Venezuela’s oil minister expressed worries that the recent recovery might peter out.

Eulogio del Pino, whose economy has been pushed to the brink by the weak oil price, said the recent rise was due to exceptional factors that have reduced global output.

These included strikes in Kuwait, wildfires in Canada, disruption in Nigeria and lower output in Colombia, he said.

“It’s not the situation of the market, it’s some circumstances,” he said. “When those circumstances are removed, what is going to happen?”

Algeria’s Oil Minister Salah Khebri said a rebalancing of the market was “on track”. He added however that further “efforts” were needed.

Thursday’s meeting may meanwhile see OPEC name a new secretary general to replace Abdalla El-Badri, a Libyan who has been in the post since 2007.

Del Pino said that he was in favour of Alí Rodríguez Araque, currently Venezuela’s ambassador to Cuba, getting the job. He previously held the position from 2001-2.