Saudi Arabia remains confident that an OPEC+ agreement to increase oil production over the next three months was the right move, said its energy minister. “It’s still a good decision,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said in an interview on Thursday. “I don’t see anything yet that disturbs us, me or my colleagues at OPEC+.”
The minister spoke a week after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia agreed to add more than 2 million barrels a day of crude to the market from May to July, anticipating a recovery in fuel demand. Since then, Brent crude has remained above $60 a barrel despite setbacks to the world’s emergence from the Covid-19 pandemic, including a vaccine shortage in India.
Brent crude rose 0.1% to $63.20 at 12:50 p.m. in Singapore, extending this year’s gain to 22%.
“If things go south, we can always easily reverse,” the minister said. The deal includes a mechanism that would allow production to “increase, freeze or decrease,” he said.