OPEC Sec. Gen. doesn’t expect oil price to fall below $100 this year

PanARMENIAN.Net - OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Salem Al-Badri said he does not expect the oil price to fall below $100 for the rest of the year.

"The price will not come down from $100 for the rest of 2011," he told a news conference on the sidelines of Iran Oil Show in Tehran. The global oil markets are sufficiently supplied and there is no need for OPEC to increase crude output, Al-Badri added.

He went on saying that OPEC has said repeatedly there is no shortage of oil anywhere in the world and stocks are high.

“OPEC has done its part to ensure that the market is adequately supplied with crude and it will be useful in this challenging time if consuming countries, who impose high taxes on oil, revise it temporarily because we are in exceptional circumstance that needs exceptional solution,” he added.

Iran’s oil minister said any increase in the output of crude would not succeed in bringing down global oil prices, a day after other OPEC members expressed concerns about costly oil hurting fragile economies in consumer countries.

“An increase of production will have no impact on the prices,” said Massoud Mirkazemi, who has described oil prices that broke two-and-a-half year highs above $127 last week as “not extraordinary”.

OPEC ministers attending a meeting in Kuwait said they were concerned that current prices of around $120 per barrel could undermine long-term economic growth and lead to a collapse in demand and prices in future years, Tehran Times reports.

Iran currently holds the revolving one-year presidency of OPEC, which groups 12 nations that pump almost a third of the world’s oil.