OPEC Head Tells Oil Market to Stop Panicking About Prices – Bloomberg.
Everyone in the oil market should stop panicking because crude supply and demand will return to equilibrium, OPEC’s Secretary-General said.
Members of OPEC, who pump about 40 percent of the world’s oil, aren’t waging a price war and haven’t demanded an emergency response to the plunge in crude futures, Abdalla El-Badri said at the Oil & Money conference in London yesterday. While the direction of oil prices, which have collapsed about 25 percent since June, remains unclear in the short term, they will have to rebound to guarantee long-term supply, he said.
“We don’t see really fundamental changes in the supply side or the demand side,” El-Badri told reporters during a briefing at the event. “Unfortunately everyone is panicking. The press is panicking, consumers are panicking. We really should think and see how this will develop.”
Crude collapsed into a bear market this month as Saudi Arabia and other producers deepened price discounts for their oil. U.S. crude production climbed to the highest level in at least 31 years last week as the shale boom moved the country closer to energy independence. Global consumption will increase this year at the slowest pace since 2009, according to the International Energy Agency.
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