OPEC, Russia talk of oil teamwork, but Saudi talks of investment

OPEC’s 13 members didn’t expect prices to fall to $30 a barrel, and some are struggling, Abdul Mahdi said.

USA crude CLc1 fell 47 cents, or 1.55 percent, to $29.87 a barrel by 2309 GMT after settling $1.85, or 5.8 percent, lower at $30.34 a barrel. Lukoil’s own oil output exceeded 100 million tonnes (2 million bpd) previous year, the company said earlier.

“Yes, [OPEC] provided some of the additional supply past year, but the majority of this has come from non-OPEC countries”, el-Badri said. Saudi Arabian Oil Co, the world’s largest oil business, is spending as much now as it did before the crash in crude prices, chairman Khalid Al-Falih said today.

As markets enter their fourth trading week of 2016, the havoc wreaked by oil prices are still being felt across a whole range of assets and markets, with European stocks coming under renewed pressure Monday after Iraq announced its oil output had reached a record high in December .

OPEC and Russian Federation, the world’s top oil producers, have refused to cooperate to help buoy global oil prices as they were defending their market share from each other.

He said: “The current environment is putting this future at risk”.

“If you look over the past 12 months and you track an index of emerging markets, stocks, currencies, junk bonds, other commodities to oil; they’re practically identical to the oil price”, Alan Miller, SCMDirect.com’s CIO, told CNBC Monday.

The official also said there will be no emergency meeting on the plunging prices of oil, unless countries both inside and outside the OPEC cartel make a concerted effort to curb production.

Mr Fedun said Opec will be forced to cut output anyway.

Energy Minister Mohammed Al Sada, speaking at the same London conference, said prices will recover as they’re now “unsustainable”, not only for unconventional oil fields but for conventional crude production too.

The paradox of the current slump is that global spare capacity is at wafer-thin levels of 2pc as Saudi Arabia pumps at will, leaving the market acutely vulnerable to any future supply-shock.

Mr. Saleh he believes that OPEC’s decision to abandon its historical role in controlling oil prices has yielded good results, “and we think emergency meeting without an agenda [is pointless]. Asia is already seeing competition from Gulf producers”, she said.

HSBC has lowered its forecast for the average price of Brent crude in 2016 from $60 to $45 a barrel, while UniCredit lowered it from $52.50 to $37 a barrel.