UAE won’t make additional voluntary OPEC oil production cuts

(Bloomberg) – The United Arab Emirates won’t be making further voluntary OPEC+ oil production cuts at the present time, said the country’s energy minister.

The UAE is “doing enough” to contribute to the OPEC+ supply curbs, Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei told reporters in Vienna. He noted the large difference between the nation’s current output — seen at 3.07 MMbpd last month, according to a Bloomberg survey — and its full capacity of 4 MMbpd.

Saudi Arabia surprised the oil market last month by announcing an additional 1 million barrel-a-day production cut, on top of supply curbs the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies announced in previous months. On Monday, the kingdom extended that reduction into August and was joined by Russia, which pledged to curtail exports by 500,000 bbl a day that month.

“The voluntary cut is going to help the market,” Mazrouei said. Other countries “generously participate voluntarily to attend to the market needs. In my assessment, this is enough.”

Lackluster demand in China has capped crude near $76 a bbl, below the level that the International Monetary Fund believes Saudi Arabia and several other OPEC members need to cover its budget. The additional voluntary production reductions announced by Riyadh and Moscow have so far done little to boost prices.

The minister was speaking on the sidelines of an OPEC conference in Vienna. OPEC has blocked Bloomberg, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal from attending, the second time in as many months that the group has excluded reporters from those organizations from its meetings without giving an explanation.