Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies should announce an extension of their output curbs when they gather at the end of this month.
OPEC is unlikely to reduce excess oil inventories to average levels by the time the current deal expires in late March, Saudi Arabian Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources Khalid al-Falih said at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany.
Russia, allied with OPEC in the deal, is not convinced that it is necessary to make a decision when the producers meet on Nov. 30, people familiar with the matter said this week.
“We need to recognize that at the end of March, we’re not going to be at the level we wanted to be, which is at the five-year average,” al-Falih said in a Bloomberg television interview on Thursday. “That means an extension of some sort is needed. My preference is to give clarity to the market and to announce on Nov. 30 what we are going to do.”
The kingdom has had “extensive” consultations with Russia, he said, and feels “fully convinced” that the country will be “fully onboard” when a resolution is made.
Al-Falih also said that foreign investment in Saudi Arabia, including the planned sale of shares in its state oil company, would be unaffected by a series of arrests of officials.
The arrests are “a very limited domestic affair, that the government is simply cleaning house for something that is way overdue,” he said.
Saudi Arabian central bank Governor Ahmed al-Kholifey told CNN television on Thursday that there has been no big outflow of money from Saudi Arabia as a result of the anti-corruption crackdown.
“We see some increase, but it’s not that much,” he said, adding that the increase was in the form of corporate transfers of funds. Individuals were not moving large amounts of money out of the country as individuals, he said.
Al-Kholifey repeated statements by top government officials that although individual businessmen had been caught in the crackdown, their companies and the economy as a whole had not been hurt, and companies could still transfer money as usual.
The bank accounts of as many as 200 individuals had been frozen in the investigation, with some having multiple accounts, he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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