‘I would not forfeit the precautionary approach’ to oil output

The influential Saudi and Russia-led oil producers’ alliance is preventively prepared to wait months for guidance from “real numbers” before adjusting policies amid price volatility in the crude market, the Saudi energy minister said Sunday.

“Yes, we may be delayed with a decision on what to do, but I would not forfeit the precautionary approach, even if it goes beyond a month or two, or three or four months, or five months,” Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told CNBC’s Dan Murphy on the sidelines of the MENA Climate Week in Riyadh.

The Riyadh-headed Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and their non-OPEC allies, together known as OPEC+, last October agreed and have since upheld a decision to remove 2 million barrels per day of production from the oil market. Since then, some OPEC+ members have implemented additional voluntary declines outside of group decisions, with a roughly 1.66 million-barrels-per-day cut stretching until the end of 2024, and with Saudi Arabia and Russia respectively lowering their supplies by an additional 1 million barrels per day and 300,000 barrels per day until the end of this year.

A technical OPEC+ committee, the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee, convened Oct. 4 to review market fundamentals and individual country compliance with production obligations. It concluded its assembly without calling for an emergency ministerial meeting to adjust output strategy.

Asked whether the group might need to entertain further coordinated production action to maintain market stability at the start of 2024, Prince Abdulaziz said: “We hope we should not,” but stressed, “Don’t you ever discard what OPEC+ can do for the purpose of attending to this market.”

The recent supply crunch and recoveries in demand initially propped up prices near $95 per barrel, but recently once more tumbled on macro-economic concerns spurred by a high interest rate environment. Oil prices have been a key contributor to global inflation since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, especially in Europe and G7 countries, where consumers have lost access to sanctioned Russian barrels.

Further weighing on prices, the Paris-based International Energy Watchdog last month predicted that demand for oil, gas and coal will peak by 2030 — triggering vocal objections from OPEC, whose officials have repeatedly and controversially advocated for simultaneous investment in fossil fuels and renewable supplies in order to avoid short-term energy shortages.

“We want to demonstrate to the world that we are going to be using every source of energy,” Prince Abdulaziz reiterated on Sunday, noting that the kingdom is “dead serious about attending to the issue of climate change. We’re not the naysayer. In fact, we have a conviction that the science is saying that it is there and we…