Qatar Cuts Oil Production in Line With OPEC Agreement to Boost Prices
quote.bloomberg.com
Qatar Cuts Oil Production as Agreed Under OPEC Pact on Prices
Doha, Qatar, May 3 (Bloomberg) -- Qatar, which has been one
of OPEC's biggest quota busters, said it has cut output as
promised in March under a plan for 14 nations to reduce oil
production to erase a global oil glut and boost prices.
Qatar agreed to slash production by 47,000 barrels a day to
593,000 barrels a day. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries and four other nations pledged to start cutting output
on April 1 in a plan to trim world supply by 2.1 million barrels
a day, or 2.7 percent.
Qatar is the smallest oil producer within OPEC, yet in
percentage terms it has been one of the group's biggest quota
violators.
''We have fully implemented our cuts,'' said Abdullah
Salatt, Qatar's OPEC governor. ''We expect compliance to reach
much higher than 80 percent in May, and for the rest of the
year.''
Oil producing states in the Persian Gulf region that pledged
under the March agreement to cut output -- Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Kuwait, U.A.E., Qatar, and Oman -- have all told Bloomberg News
that they are in full compliance with the pact. These states
account for over 50 percent of the total cuts promised.
In London, June Brent crude oil rose 12 cents to $16.57 a
barrel on Friday on the International Petroleum Exchange. Prices
are about 52 percent higher than in early March, when producers
first started discussing the round of output cuts.
If exporters fulfill their promises and demand rises as
forecast, it would be the first time since the fourth quarter of
1996 that oil demand will exceed supply, the International Energy
Agency reported.
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh told Bloomberg
last month that he didn't expect full compliance to the new
output cuts in April. ''I think they will comply near fully, not
100 percent but more than 90 percent, but not in April, in May,''
he said.
OPEC met 77.6 percent of its promised oil output cuts in
March, according to a Bloomberg survey, up from 70.7 percent the
month before.
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