The oil market will need more crude from Libya and Nigeria as it re-balances at a faster rate in the second half after a slow start, OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo has said.
Compliance with production cuts by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is “excellent,” Barkindo told reporters in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Libya and Nigeria are exempt from the cuts and have been boosting production, leading to speculation about whether OPEC will seek to cap their output to help reduce a global glut.
“The re-balancing process may be going on at a slower pace than we earlier projected, but it is on course, and it’s bound to accelerate in the second half,” Barkindo said Sunday. Demand is expected to grow by 2 million barrels a day in the second half, he said, without specifying if he was comparing that with the same period of 2016 or the first half of this year.
Brent crude prices have declined 15 percent this year on concerns that growing output in Libya and Nigeria, as well as the U.S., is more than making up for production cuts by OPEC members and other oil producers, including Russia. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih and Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak are scheduled to attend a meeting in St. Petersburg Monday to discuss the progress of their agreement to trim output.