OPEC’s former president said the group is “powerless” to prevent oil prices falling further and must seek a global deal to arrest the decline, the Telegraph has reported.
Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, a former president of OPEC and a senior adviser to the Emir of Qatar, said: “OPEC can’t solve this problem alone like before. Now it’s a different story. Russia, Norway and Mexico all must sit down with OPEC to discuss making cuts.”
However, Mr al-Attiyah, said that he doubted the 12 member countries would agree to an emergency meeting unless producers outside the cartel also agreed to curb production.
He added that the oil market currently was suffering from an oversupply in the region of 2mn barrels per day (bpd), most of which is coming from production outside the group.
“It’s a disaster,” Mr al-Attiyah told The Daily Telegraph. “OPEC should meet with non-OPEC countries to resolve this, but America will never cut production.”
OPEC agreed to leave its production unchanged at 30mn bpd at last month’s meeting.
In the last six months Brent has fallen around 44% to around $64 per barrel- its steepest decline since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008.
The group’s share of the global market for around 90mn bpd of crude has fallen from around half to a third over the last 20 years as new oil reserves have been tapped into around the world and better technology has made shale oil in the US possible.
“Without other cooperation I don’t see another emergency meeting of OPEC,” said Mr al-Attiyah.
Al-Attiyah’s comments came as the GCC summit concluded in Doha last week. Falling oil prices were high on the agenda.
