Energy expert: World oil market be politicized by Russia
A senior Iranian oil and gas market analyst told “When demand for global oil rises, the new oil producers are entering the market and taking the OPEC's share.”
In an exclusive interview with ILNA news agency, the president of Vienna Energy Research Group in Austria Fereydoun Barkeshli said that now Russia, Venezuela, and Iran can form a new OPEC with the countries which are subject to US sanctions.
Referring to the recent agreement in OPEC+, he added that the effects of the OPEC+ Summit, now perhaps we can call it “Plus + Plus Summit”, will be more visible in the third-quarter 2020 prices.
Members of OPEC and their allies, including Russia and Mexico, announced Sunday that they have agreed to cut production by 9.7 million barrels a day in May and June, the deepest cut ever agreed to by the world's oil producers. After that, the group will steadily ramp up production until the agreement expires in April 2022.
The National Iranian Oil Company’s former general manager for OPEC confirmed that there are virtually no winners. However, oil consumers might have benefited from lower oil prices and abundant supplies.
“The world market is highly globalized and when oil producers earn less revenue, they spend less in consequence and their imports are squeezed by lack of income so, in fact, there are more losers than winners.”
Fereydoun Barkeshli stressed that the worst of the price war has passed and the global market is currently facing a large stockpile of unsold oil.
“Under the coronavirus pandemic, world oil consumption is remarkably reduced and crude prices are being pushed into negative territory,” he said.
The President of Vienna Energy Research Group said “For the past 100 years, the global market has not faced such pressure. The outbreak of the coronavirus has seriously damaged a part of the world that has been the engine of growth in oil demand over the past 20 years.
The energy expert said that of course, the entry of new countries, especially Russia, politicizes the global oil market more than ever, adding “For Russia, the price of oil does not matter now; They want United States lift sanctions against Russian oil companies.”
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