ABU DHABI, November 11. /TASS/. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak is due to meet in Abu Dhabi on Sunday with his Saudi counterpart Khalid Al-Falih before the OPEC/non-OPEC Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee meeting, sources in two delegations told TASS.
Both ministers, whose countries are key participants of the OPEC plus alliance, will discuss the agenda of the upcoming talks during a one-on-one meeting. These traditional meetings usually determine the outcome of the talks.
In the beginning of this week, Al-Falih offered Novak to discuss reducing the oil output in 2019, according to TASS sources. The next day Novak held a meeting with Russian companies to hash over this issue.
On Saturday, Abu Dhabi hosted a meeting of the technical monitoring committee attended by experts of the participating countries. It discussed various scenarios of developing the oil market in the near future, including the possible excessive supply in 2019. Experts voiced concerns over the situation on the market and the balance between supply and demand, the delegates told reporters after the meeting.
The current deal on limiting production, which will be in force until the end of this year, stipulates cutting oil output by 1.8 mln barrels per day from the level of October 2016. However, amid the falling production in a number of OPEC plus countries such as Venezuela and Mexico, the deal performance level reached 150%. Due to this reason, in July a decision was made to increase oil production by 1 mln barrels per day to bring the performance level to 100%. In October, the performance level of the OPEC+ oil production capping deal was 104%
On November 5, sanctions against Iran entered into force, with the goal of reducing Tehran’s oil exports to zero. However, the US allowed eight countries to continue buying Iran’s oil on a temporary basis. Despite the sanctions, the price of Brent crude has been declining since October 10, losing nearly $15 per barrel by now.