OPEC mulls emergency meeting on $27 oil price

Ibe Kachikwu, state minister for petroleum resources, says the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) may hold an emergency meeting to address plunging oil prices.

Kachikwu said some OPEC members had requested an emergency meeting, saying the current market realities are in direct support of such a meeting.

According to OPEC secretariat calculations, “the price of OPEC basket of thirteen crudes stood at 27.07 dollars a barrel on Monday, compared with $28.46 the previous Friday”.

According to Reuters, Benchmark Brent crude oil futures were trading at less than $31 per barrel on Tuesday, their lowest level since April 2004, and have shed almost three-quarters of their value since mid-2014.

Speaking at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi, the outgone OPEC president said there was a lot of push from various blocs within OPEC for the need of a meeting.

“Any meeting that would take place would be to review OPEC’s position to see if there was any need to change its strategy,” Kachikwu said, adding that the meeting could take place in February or March.

The OPEC Conference, at its 168th ordinary meeting, decided that its next ordinary meeting will convene on Thursday, June 2, 2016 in Vienna, Austria.

Experts have said the oil cartel’s decisions are largely made by the heavyweight Saudi Arabia, which has resisted calls for a cut in production to help boost prices.

The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) however said: “Saudi Arabia has never held the position that it does not want to talk…In fact, it was very supportive of a meeting before June, at the time when we held the December meeting.”

Saudi Arabia-Iran tension is also taking toll on the global price of crude as fear of oversupply persist.

The oversupply of crude oil expected in 2016 remains as high as 1.5 million barrels per day.