Saudi Arabia Oil Minister Ali bin Ibrahim al-Nuaimi. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Saudi Arabia is reportedly ready to hike their oil output and gain a larger market share in order to fulfil demand of any new potential clients, the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper quoted the kingdom’s Oil Minister as saying on Monday morning, according to Reuters.
According to the state-owned newspaper, when asked if Saudi Arabia was looking to maintain a market share of 9.7 million barrels per day, the nation’s Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi, told the newspaper: “Yes, unless a new client comes along and then we may increase it.”
The Oil Minister’s remark comes as one of the strongest signals yet that the world’s top oil exporter has no plans to cut its oil output despite the tumble in the price of oil, and that the nation is prepared to use its low cost of production to gain share in the market from its non-OPEC competitors – which it is blaming for the collapse in the price of oil.
The Saudi Oil Minister said at a conference on Sunday that Saudi Arabia would not cut output to boost oil prices – even if non-OPEC nations followed suit – and that most logical way to address current conditions in the oil market was to “let the most efficient producers produce”.
“Based on the analysis we have done, we will not cut output at OPEC,” al-Naimi told the al-Hayat newspaper.
The minister dismissed chatter about an oil price debate with his Russian counterpart, Alexander Novak, during a meeting that took place on the sidelines of the OPEC conference in Vienna in late november.
Al-Naimi said that he had ended this meeting when Novak after he had confirmed that Russia was not willing to cut oil output.
“I did not ask him any question and I don’t know who reported this talk,” al-Hayat quoted Naimi as saying.
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