The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will keep its
production quota unchanged at its policy meeting Wednesday, in the context of a
well supplied oil market, but the cartel will discuss how to align actual
production with members' output targets, Qatari Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad
Al Attiyah said Tuesday.
"The market is well supplied--we are seeing inventories are very high and
comfortable," Al Attiyah said.
Probably the thorniest issue on the agenda is compliance of OPEC's members to
their production targets, but Al Attiyah said
Qatar
strives to stick to its own quota.
OPEC's own statistics, released last week, show compliance by the group's 11
quota-bound members with the output cuts agreed in 2008 has now fallen to 53.2%
from 55.9% in January and 80% in March last year.
Qatar
is
"always trying to be very strong" in complying with its target, Al
Attiyah said. "We [OPEC] will discuss compliance and see how to deal with
it."
Al Attiyah said fluctuations in oil prices are down to speculation rather than
supply and demand.
The minister also said that it is too early to say whether the Gas Exporting
Countries Forum will cut gas supplies, but agreed gas prices are currently
below their optimum range.
"We feel this [the low gas price] is unfair," he said. "We are
not asking for a premium, but price parity for gas with oil."
Earlier Wednesday the president of the GECF, Chakib Khelil, who is also
Algeria
's oil
minister, said natural gas producers may restrict their output to correct
oversupply and boost prices, countering skepticism that gas countries can't
influence prices the same way as oil producers.
Al Attiyah said
Qatar
is
discussing the possibility of increasing supplies of liquefied natural gas to
India
, one
of its main LNG customers.
"We started seven years ago supplying
India
with
7.5 million [metric] tons of LNG," the minister said. "We are
discussing now how to expand supply to
India
."
The minister also said
Qatar
isn't
vulnerable to
Europe
's sovereign debt crisis. "No, we are on the safe
side," he said.