OPEC members committed to oil output deal- Barkindo

OPEC secretary-general, Mohammed Barkindo on Monday in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja said oil production cuts have been well supported by all participating countries despite some troubles for non-OPEC members.

He noted that OPEC remained optimistic that the “worst was over” for the oil market, almost two months into the group’s supply cut deal with Russia and other producers.

According to him, nearly $1 trillion was lost globally in terms of defined and outright cancellation of projects across the supply chain of upstream, mainstream and downstream.

He stated that OPEC and non-OPEC organisations are making efforts to pull the industry out of its current recession.

“There are some teething challenges in some of the non-OPEC countries because this is the first time that they are being subjected to such a joint monitoring exercise, but the numbers for the month of January – that is the first month in the regime of six months has shown very commendable high level of conformity with about 90 to 94%,” he added.

Barkindo said production data for January in OPEC’s most recent monthly report showed conformity from participating OPEC nations with agreed output curbs.

Barkindo urged the chieftains in the industry to rally round the Nigeria Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachiwku in order to march forward in all reforms and diversification in all forms.

“This decision is for six months, therefore these countries continue to be exempted for these six months and we will continue to pray and hope that they will recover their production, they will rehabilitate their production facilities and return to the market fully because the market needs every barrel that Nigeria can produce or Libya, or the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.

All participating countries committed to oil output deal, says OPEC secretary-general https://t.co/aEFTNwE82v

— Peter Eriksson (@peteroferiksson) February 27, 2017

Under the deal, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to curb output by about 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1, the first cut in eight years.

Russia and 10 other non-OPEC producers agreed to cut around half as much.