The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) still wants Russia to cut its oil production by some 180,000 barrels a day, Qatar's Oil Minister Abdallah Al-Attiyah said in an interview published Tuesday, December 4.
"We are waiting for a Russian reduction of 180,000 barrels per day," Al-Attiyah told the daily Vremya Novostei, adding that a cut of 100,000 would be "rather insufficient." Until now Russia has offered a cut of only 50,000 barrels a day, or 0.7 percent of its total production, over the last quarter of 2001.
The heads of Russia's eight or nine major oil companies are due to meet Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov on Wednesday to study the possibility of additional cuts for the beginning of next year.
Russia, the world's second-largest oil exporter, is not one of the 11 members of the OPEC oil-exporting cartel. OPEC controls only 35 percent of the world's petroleum market and is therefore unable single-handedly to determine its activity, Al-Attiyah said. But if the major independent producers do not cooperate, OPEC members could choose to leave a cartel whose existence was no longer justified in their eyes. And "if OPEC disintegrates, the oil price would fall to five dollars a barrel," the Qatari minister warned. — (AFP, Moscow)
© Agence France Presse 2001
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
