Nigeria and Iraq have said the strategy employed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, OPEC+, to gradually raise oil production is enough to balance the market.
Both countries insisted that there was no need for OPEC to be more aggressive, despite crude oil surge this year to almost $100 a barrel.
The 23-nation alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, would meet on March 2 to decide the next line of action in terms of the amount of oil it expected members to pump in April. Bloomberg quoted Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva, as maintaining that the international cartel would not need to take any unplanned barrels to the market, stressing that the current plan perfectly serves the market as it is.
Sylva told reporters at an event in Doha, Qatar, according to Bloomberg, “We won’t do anything extraordinary at this time because we are expecting a lot of production from outside of OPEC+.”
He added, “There’s no need at all to bring on more barrels than the current plan. We are expecting more production if a nuclear deal with Iran works out (since) there will be production from them.”
