At its November 30 meeting, OPEC will seek to discuss making its current partnership with non-OPEC producers permanent, OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo told reporters at the Oil & Money conference in London on Thursday.
“This platform of 24 countries, now hopefully growing, should be institutionalized,” Barkindo said, as quoted by Platts.
“We should have a permanent framework to sustain this platform,” OPEC’s secretary general added. “We are working with the Russian and Saudis on how we can structure this platform to sustain it.”
In his speech at the conference, OPEC’s chief said that “at OPEC we recognize the importance of institutionalizing a framework that builds on this unparalleled global platform of stability. This would go beyond the short-term and look at some of the broader challenges, as well as opportunities, the oil industry is expected to face in the years and decades ahead.”
Referring to the U.S. shale producers, Barkindo reiterated his view that American producers should have a “shared responsibility”, and said that some of them are “playing the proverbial ostrich.”
In an unconventional plea to U.S. shale drillers last week, Barkindo urged North American producers to share the responsibility for drawing down the global oil overhang.
“We urge our friends in the shale basins of North America to take this shared responsibility with all the seriousness it deserves, as one of the key lessons learnt from the current, unique supply-driven cycle,” OPEC’s chief said in a speech last week.
Commenting on the shale drillers’ opportunities and challenges, Barkindo said today:
“You cannot have your cake and eat it. Hence we are beginning to see some of them coming out to say we have to be mindful of fiscal discipline. The funding they are getting from Wall Street is not continuing at the pace and level that they were getting.”
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
