posted by admin on Jun 16
Riyadh,Saudi Arabia -
The Detroit News (USA) -June 16, 2008: --
Saudi Arabia plans to increase its oil production by 200,000 barrels a day next month, the kingdom's oil minister told U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Sunday, according to Farhan Haq Ban's spokesman... By July, production should be at 9.7 million barrels a day, Haq said... Ban also said Saudi Arabia understands that the current price of oil, which topped $139 per barrel earlier this month, is not normal... The 200,000-barrel-a-day boost is not insignificant -- it will raise Saudi Arabia's daily production by about 2 percent. But to a market that has been sending oil prices soaring to record heights due in part to strong global demand, the move might be seen as marginal... The oil market largely ignored Saudi Arabia's 300,000-barrel-a-day output increase last month... In electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange late Sunday, crude oil futures were down 54 cents at $134.32 a barrel... The current president of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Chakib Khelil, has said that the cartel will make no new decision on production levels until its Sept. 9 meeting in Vienna... OPEC ministers often follow the lead of the Saudis when discussing whether to increase production to take the pressure off rising prices...
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posted by admin on May 29
Luxembourg,Europe -
New Europe, by Kostis Geropoulos -26 May 2008: --
... The sight of the US President begging in public view before the Saudi royal family, holding hands with them, literally, in the hope of persuading the kingdom to increase production to bring soaring oil prices down was humiliating to Americans around the world... It might well be that OPEC has decided to allow prices to go ahead and go up and start heading to that transitional way from an oil-based economy. If OPEC increases oil production by a million or two barrels per day in the long term, it could drive prices back down to, let’s say, USD 70 per barrel. If this reignites growth and usage and they know that they do not have any substantial increased capacity, and then what will happen in three to five years is a huge price spike, leading to peak oil, Ron Smith, chief strategist at Alfa Bank in Moscow, said... OPEC is right now practically the only source of all extra production. “If they don’t have it, it’s to their interest to make the peak oil not so much a peak but a plateau,” Smith said. “The earlier we enter the plateau — oil prices start to rise, moderate demand and encourage marginal production in small, expensive fields — the more likely we will have a gradual transition. Otherwise they can try to keep the prices down until the day we run out of excess capacity completely and then we will have a price spike far beyond what we have seen. The second will be dangerous.”... (Foto por CECILIA PUEBLA/ANA/EPA -May 23, 2008: OPEC Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri visits the oil station Bloque 15 in the Ecuadorian Amazon)
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