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Fair price for oil is 50 to 55 dollars per barrel: Qatari minister
AFP/File/Francois Guillot
The OPEC organization will decide at talks this week to keep pumping oil at current levels, Qatar's Energy Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah said.AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 06 16 06
Crude oil prices remain skewed by geopolitical factors, but a fair market price should be in a range of 50 to 55 dollars a barrel, Qatari Energy Minister Abdullah al Attiyah said Thursday.
Speaking to journalists in Washington, Attiyah said his country and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) do not set market prices, which have recently been in the range of 70 dollars a barrel.
"The fair price today should be between 50 and 55 dollars," he said.
"It's a reasonable price, but we never control prices, they are market driven. ... The barrel lost five dollars in a few days due to geopolitics, and it's no longer related to demand and supply."
Asked about whether OPEC is using a particular price point to determine its production quotas, the minister said: "We don't have a secret number."
"We'll wait and see. We are watching the market very carefully, the market today reacts very fast ... on speculator fears and geopolitics," he added.
Attiyah brushed aside concerns about a global shortage of crude oil, saying all producing nations are boosting their output.
"There is more oil in the market than ever before," he said.
But he noted that some products may be in short supply in the United States, for example, because of a lack of refining capacity, adding: "The last refinery was built (in the United States) 30 years ago."
Qatar is the 14th-largest exporter of crude oil, according to US data. In OPEC, it has the smallest quota, some 700,000 barrels per day.
AFP 15 1833 GMT 06 06
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