Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister rallied Opec support for maintaining production on Thursday, as a near-doubling of crude prices since January eased tensions among oil exporters. Khalid Al Falih said that the 13-member group should “encourage the rebalancing” of the market as prices recover from the worst crash in more than a decade. But he told reporters at the Opec meeting in Vienna that it was “premature” to try and restrict output, as demanded by some of the hardest hit exporters, when production growth was already declining and demand was responding to lower prices. “We feel the market is rebalancing as we speak,” Mr Falih said, adding that Riyadh wanted “to work collaboratively …[to] steward the market back to equilibrium”. Weaker Opec members, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, had called for more robust co-ordinated action to boost the price further as they face economic and political crises. But even they seemed content to put on a largely united front for the group. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, Nigeria’s oil minister, reflected the mood of the meeting, saying: “The market is doing good.”