Oil : OPEC increased production without political influence – Barkindo 

The Secretary-General of OPEC, Mr Muhammad Barkindo, has dismissed insinuations that political pressure played a role in OPEC’s decision to increase oil production.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, after the OPEC and non-OPEC ministers had on Saturday agreed to increase oil supplies, Barkindo said the decision to increase oil production by one million barrels a day, starting July 1, 2018, was taken without political influence.

OPEC Secretary-General  said, “The impact of geopolitics is visible everywhere in this industry, and therefore our efforts to insulate the organisation from geopolitics have never been more challenging than now.

“The founding fathers of this organisation designed it in a way that will be an unpolitical organisation focusing on the industry and as a technical body that advises member countries.

“So politics is not for us in the organisation.

“We remain focused as an unpolitical organisation and will remain focused on our core responsibility of trying to manage the market, especially the instrument of supply management to maintain stability at all times.”

Barkindo said OPEC had transformed and that was why the organisation remained a strong voice in the energy industry.

He said since he took over the leadership of the organisation in August 2016, the membership had grown from 13 to 16 as result of unrelenting negotiations.

He said to make the organisation more attractive, the OPEC secretariat was designing a framework that would allow countries to join the organisation as part-time members.

“The family is growing and for us, the more the better.

“Equally important is the fact that for the first time, we have been able to establish a Declaration of Cooperation that brought 25 countries to share responsibility to this one industry that we all belong.

“We are trying to institutionalise this cooperation because we all agree that we are better together. That is why we are focusing on how we can stay together.

“We are now developing that framework. This will allow countries to join OPEC as full members, some as associate members,” he said.

On the growing force of US Shale in the crude oil market, Barkindo said OPEC had successfully established a channel of communication with shale oil producers, which he said would further stabilise the market.

“Without the shale revolution in the US bringing in now over 5 million barrels per day, the world would have faced probably one of the worst energy crises.

“We have been able to establish a communication channel so we now understand ourselves much better.

“In a meeting in Houston, we agreed that we belong to the same boat and the Berlin Wall between us, we all agreed served nobody any good.

“In fact some of them were present at the 7th OPEC international seminar which held here in Vienna,” he said

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