By Adedapo Adesanya
The price of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exportation Countries (OPEC) basket crudes rose more than two per cent to S$44.12 per barrel on Wednesday, July 15 2020.
According to the latest OPEC Secretariat calculations released on Thursday, the average price of 13 crudes rose 2.56 per cent or $1.10 compared with $43.02 published the previous day.
The OPEC Reference Basket of Crudes is made up of the following: Saharan Blend (Algeria), Girassol (Angola), Djeno (Congo), Zafiro (Equatorial Guinea), Rabi Light (Gabon), Iran Heavy (Iran), Basra Light (Iraq), Kuwait Export (Kuwait), Es Sider (Libya), Bonny Light (Nigeria), Arab Light (Saudi Arabia), Murban (UAE) and Merey (Venezuela).
Prices rose after the agreement between OPEC and its Russia-led allies to lift some of their output restrictions, banking on numbers showing that the world’s demand for oil is beginning to recover from a coronavirus pandemic induced
With the development on Wednesday, from August, the 23-country alliance will ease their collective output cuts to 7.7 million barrels per day from the previous 9.7 million barrels that took effect in May.
The producer alliance has also planned to taper output cuts further to 5.8 million barrels per day between January 2021 and April 2022.
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister and de facto head of OPEC, said that extra supply resulting from the cuts would be consumed by global demand growth.
The OPEC leader said that the cuts might only be reduced to 8 million barrels a day if Nigeria and Iraq, chronic laggards as a result of their dependence on crude oil stick to their promise to curtail supply.
