Algeria’s energy minister has said there is a consensus among OPEC and non-OPEC members about the need to stabilize the oil market to support prices, state news agency APS reported on Saturday.
Algerian Minister of Energy Noureddine Bouterfa was speaking after meeting his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Khalid al-Falih, and OPEC secretary-general Mohammed Barkindo in Paris late on Friday.
Bouterfa has traveled to Qatar, Iran and Russia this week to push for the oil price to be stabilized between US$50 and US$60, and said he was “confident” about the outcome of an OPEC meeting to be held in Algiers between Sept. 26 and Sept. 28.
Bouterfa said Algeria would submit a proposal to steady prices at the meeting.
“Our discussions with our partners show that there is a consensus around the necessity of stabilizing the market. That is already something positive,” Bouterfa said.
“We are in contact with the members and the secretary-
general of OPEC and that is part of this work of achieving a consensus and I am optimistic. There is support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait and from non-OPEC countries, notably Russia.”
Barkindo told APS, in remarks published later, that OPEC was not seeking a definite price range for oil but rather “sustainable stability” for the market.
Algeria is hosting a meeting of the International Energy Forum alongside the OPEC meeting later this month, and Bouterfa said he had discussed both sessions with Falih and Barkindo in Paris.
Moves towards clinching a global deal on stabilizing crude output come five months after talks for such a deal failed when Saudi Arabia insisted Iran join the pact.
Tehran says it supports any measures to stabilize the market, but has stopped short of indicating whether it would join a global deal before its production reaches 4 million barrels per day, the level at which it says it was pumping before the imposition of Western sanctions in 2012.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)