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Nigeria and Iraq to boost OPEC oil output 8 percent by 2014
Published on December 16, 2009 by oilprices · No CommentsOPEC will expand its oil output by 8.2 percent to almost 37 million barrels a day by 2014 on growth in Nigeria and Iraq, the IEA said. OPEC member countries will ramp up the amount of oil it can provide by 2.8 million barrels a day to 36.9 million barrels a day by 2014, it said.
Meanwhile, OPEC has been causioned not to raise its oil output targets when it meets later this month. Two oil ministers from the group said, suggesting the group sees no need to curb rallying oil prices. The group which pumps more than a third of the world’s oil meets in Luanda, Angola on Dec. 22. Oil is trading near $74 a barrel, almost double the price a year ago and in the $70-$80 range many in OPEC see as fair.
“The market is reasonably stable, so no, I don’t think so,” Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, Odein Ajumogobia, said on the sidelines of a meeting of gas exporting nations when asked if OPEC needed to pump more oil.
The comments came as the chief economist of the IEA, which represents 28 industrialised countries, warned that oil above $70 to $80 could be risky for the global economic recovery. But the oil minister for Iran, the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said current prices were not favourable and also saw no need for OPEC to pump more oil.
“I don’t think so,” Massoud Mirkazemi said through an interpreter in Doha. Iran is often among the first in OPEC to voice measures likely to support oil prices.
Many OPEC members including Saudi Arabia, the most influential, say the group is likely to hold output steady in Angola. OPEC agreed to curb its output by 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd) last year, about 5 percent of world demand, as oil use and prices declined due to recession. It has kept official policy unchanged at meetings this year, but industry estimates show actual OPEC production has gradually risen since April alongside the rally in crude prices.