BAKU, March 18 / TASS /. The next meeting of the OPEC + monitoring committee may take place in May, a source in OPEC told TASS on Monday.
According to the agency source, the ministerial monitoring committee is currently discussing the postponement of the OPEC+ April meeting to June. He clarified that this is not about a cancellation of a meeting, but rather a postponement. There is a discussion underway of holding the next ministerial monitoring committee meeting in May.
Kazakhstan Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said that the Ministerial Committee on Monitoring the Implementation of the Agreement on the Reduction of Oil Production is discussing the possibility of postponing the OPEC+ ministers meeting from April to June. "There is a proposal to postpone to a later date, to June. Such a proposal was made. There is no solution yet," he said.
The OPEC ministerial meeting was originally scheduled for April 17-18 in Vienna. Earlier, the Minister of Energy of Saudi Arabia, Khaled al-Faleh, said that it would be more expedient to discuss the issue of a possible extension of the OPEC + agreement for the second half of 2019 in June, rather than in April, as originally intended.
Last week, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on the sidelines of the Russian Investment Forum in Sochi that the Charter on the termless cooperation of the OPEC + countries could be signed at an extraordinary ministerial meeting of the alliance on April 17-18, 2019.
On December 2018, OPEC+ countries decided to cut production by 1.2 mln barrels per day from the level of October 2018. It is planned that OPEC nations will reduce output by 800,000 barrels per day, while the remaining countries - by 400,000 barrels. In particular, Russia will cut production by 228,000 barrels per day. The deal covers the first half of 2019.