OPEC secretary general Abdalla el-Badri said Tuesday he expected world oil prices to stage a recovery from two-year lows by the end of this year.
The oil producer group’s crude basket, which dipped below the $100/barrel level in mid-August and has been falling since, stood at $94.68/b on Monday.
“The oil price has been falling over the past two months but we believe that the price will grow again by the end of the year,” Russian news agency Prime quoted Badri as saying after talks with Russian energy minister Alexander Novak in Vienna.
A joint statement said the talks had reached “a general consensus that the market is well-supplied with healthy stock levels and adequate spare capacity.”
Both delegations, the statement said, “also underscored the importance of stable and predictable markets for the health of the industry and investments and the well-being of the global economy.”
Russia’s budget envisages crude prices for Urals, the country’s key export blend, at $96/barrel, and the current decline in oil prices puts pressure on a country already hit by western sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukrainian conflict.
The sanctions limit access to capital markets for a number of Russian key oil producers and also ban exports of equipment and technology for oil drilling in the Arctic and deepsea as well as for shale.
– Platts.com
