OPEC output down 90,000 BPD in November: Survey
Monday, December 10 2001 - 11:24 PM WIB
The 10 members with quotas--these do not include Iraq whose exports are controlled by the United Nations under the oil-for-aid program--produced an average 24MBPD over the month. This represented a dip of 20,000 BPD from their October average of 24.02MBPD but left them 799,000 BPD above their 23.201MBPD output ceiling.
Indonesia was the only country to produce within its quota, which is 1.2MBPD. Algeria and Venezuela increased production month-on-month by a combined 40,000 BPD. Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia reduced their output by a combined 140,000 BPD, while Indonesian, Iranian and UAE volumes were unchanged from October.
Among countries exceeding their quota, Nigeria surpassed its limit by the biggest amount, overproducing its 1.911MBPD quota by 259,000 BPD in November. Other violations ranged from 129,000 BPD in the case of Saudi Arabia down to 15,000 BPD in the case of the UAE. Volumes from Iraq, which does not have a quota, fell by 70,000 BPD.
OPEC has yet to confirm that it will implement its conditional 1.5MBPD cut on Jan. 1, insisting that non-OPEC producers should come up with exactly 500,000 BPD in reciprocal cuts. However, Russian statements last week about reducing crude exports after Jan. 1 have led to some signals from OPEC that it would probably implement the reduction.
``Even as OPEC is looking at the possibility of an even tighter quota after the first of the year, it still has not managed to reduce its production to even the 23.201MBPD ceiling that has been in effect for the last three months,'' said John Kingston, Global Director of Oil for Platts. ``Current production exceeds that quota by almost 800,000 BPD. To reach the projected post-Jan. 1 quota, output would need to be reduced by 2.3MBPD. That is a tall order. The best OPEC can probably hope for now is an upturn in demand to ease the pressure on it to reduce output.?? (*)