Скачать или смотреть OPEC chief gives no hint of strategy change as oil prices continue to slide

(15 Dec 2014) As oil prices continue to fall sharply, the secretary-general of OPEC is giving no indication that the oil cartel will change its strategy.
Abdullah al-Badri is urging Gulf Arab nations to keep investing in oilfield development despite the plunge in crude prices.

Oil prices have shed nearly half their value since late June.
Prices fell by four percent on Friday leaving benchmark US oil prices at 57.81 dollars a barrel - their lowest level since May 2009 when the US was still in recession.
In the Gulf region, markets were continuing to decline on Sunday, with Dubai's stock index dropping 7.6 percent by closing.
Investors are concerned that the drop in the price of oil, which is the backbone of Gulf economies, could lead to less government spending and reduced economic growth.
Speaking at the Arab Strategy Forum in Dubai, OPEC Secretary-General Abdullah al-Badri says increased production by non-OPEC countries is adding to world supplies, but it is not enough to account for the steep decline over the past six months.
"We as an organisation are assessing the situation to determine what the real reasons behind the decrease in oil prices are."
But al-Badri is giving no indication the cartel is prepared to shift its strategy to halt the slide.
Continued investment by Gulf nations will help prevent a shortfall in oil supplies once demand picks back up, al-Badri says.
He believes OPEC will weather the latest downturn, saying similar things have happened several times in the past, and that Gulf countries who benefited from previous high prices have built up the financial contingency to cope with lean times.
"For the Gulf countries, this discrepancy in the lowering of gas prices is a cyclical effect that happened before a few times. It happened about three times, and prices dropped by 12 dollars a barrel but then prices came back up. In the last four years, petrol was over 100 dollars a barrel and of course there are some countries that benefited from this, in particular the Gulf countries benefited greatly, and tried to take precautions that they will need to use in these difficult times until maybe 2015," he explains.
"There are of course some countries that are going through some difficult political situations and these countries, truthfully, are going to face problems and it (the oil price) doesn't have a hand in that."
At its most recent meeting late last month, the 12-member OPEC decided to keep its output target unchanged.
A cut might have helped lift prices, but it also could have hurt members' market share in the face of rivals, which increasingly include the United States thanks to its oil-shale boom.
Oil analyst Robin Mills, the head of Consulting at Manaar Energy Consulting and Project Management, is not surprised that OPEC's decided not to cut production.
"It is completely what I expected because I never thought that the Saudis would cut production in this case, because I think the Saudi view is that this is, it is actually better to have a period of low prices and try and reduce some of the competition, particularly out of the US, and to also try and encourage demand to recover somewhat," he says.
OPEC has struggled to maintain discipline among its own members, whose overproduction undermines any official target cut.
But while Gulf nations appear to be well placed to weather the storm, Mills says other OPEC members may find a period of lower prices more of a struggle, especially if prices take a long period to rise.
And there are other countries in the Middle East, such as Egypt, whose economies are heavily dependent on the Gulf nations.


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