World oil prices down
By Sara Israfilbayova
The oil prices of reference marks are lowered because of fears of growth of production in OPEC and the emerging trade war between the U.S. and China.
Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $76.86 per barrel, down 0.64 per cent, U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $65.28 a barrel, down 0.62 percent, according to Rosbalt.
Earlier, Energy Minister of Ecuador Carlos Perez confirmed that Saudi Arabia and Russia had made a proposal to increase oil production in the OPEC + countries by 1.5 million barrels per day, which will be distributed among countries. Ecuador is ready to increase production by 20-25 thousand b/s, if necessary, the minister said.
A few days ago, US President Donald Trump again criticized OPEC for the fact that this organization, in his opinion, supports world oil prices at a "too high" level.
Until recently, oil prices reached $80 per barrel. However, as the head of the Bureau of Complex Analysis and Forecast Sergey Dyachenko explained to the site “Today”, this price was speculative.
“$80 is an unrealistic price for oil, in principle, everyone recognized that $45-50 is a comfortable price for most oil-producing countries, they were oriented to it, $ 80 is already a speculative price,” Dyachenko noted.
OPEC and non-OPEC producers reached an agreement in December 2016 to curtail oil output jointly and ease a global glut after more than two years of low prices. OPEC agreed to slash the output by 1.2 million barrels per day from January 1.
Non-OPEC oil producers such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, Sudan, and South Sudan agreed to reduce output by 558,000 barrels per day starting from January 1, 2017.
OPEC and its partners decided to extend its production cuts till the end of 2018 in Vienna on November 30, as the oil cartel and its allies step up their attempt to end a three-year supply glut that has savaged crude prices and the global energy industry.
The next meeting of the ministerial monitoring committee of OPEC + will be held on June 21 in Vienna. It will be followed by a meeting of the OPEC countries on June 22 and a meeting of all 24 OPEC member countries on June 23, at which quotas for production reduction can be revised.
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Sara Israfilbayova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Sara_999Is
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