Kuwait hints OPEC ready to ‘cooperate’ to stabilize oil market

Mr. Saleh said that Gulf producers will continue investing in expanding their production capacity regardless of the price to avoid future price spikes, and Kuwait will base its fiscal budget on a price of oil around $25 a barrel.

CITY-Crude oil prices will remain low this year and likely to trade between $40 to $60 a barrel until 2020 due to oversupply and slowing demand, Kuwait’s top OPEC representative Nawal al-Fuzaia said on Tuesday.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has refused to cut production despite a drop in oil prices to 13-year lows.

“There’s some hopeful analysis that OPEC and Russian Federation will come to an agreement to remove supply to boost prices”, said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy.

The minister said that the price of oil is expected to rise gradually to around $50 a barrel in the second half of this year.

Iraq’s Madhi and Kuwaiti acting Oil Minister Anas al-Saleh said they were willing to back an emergency meeting of Opec, but only if an agenda were agreed in advance.

Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi said he saw “some flexibility” for a deal, an idea that has been repeatedly mooted and dismissed for more than a year.

“Fears of a sharp slowdown in economic growth, particularly in China, are dragging down global stock markets from arguably overheated levels”, Energy Aspects analysts said in a report.

Opec is considering a request from cash-strapped member Venezuela to hold an emergency meeting to discuss steps to prop up prices, and Venezuela has called for a meeting of Opec and non-Opec in February.

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, has led the group in fighting for market share against higher-cost producers such as shale drillers in the U.S.

Oil rose towards $31 a barrel on Tuesday, lifted by hopes that OPEC and non-OPEC producers may be edging closer to a deal to tackle one of the biggest supply gluts in decades. “I read these comments as you did”, she said.