By Adedapo Adesanya
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia have postponed a meeting earlier scheduled for today to discuss oil output cut to Thursday, April 9.
This occurred after a fresh dispute ensued between Russia and OPEC de-facto leader, Saudi Arabia, over who is to blame for plunging crude prices.
The emergency meeting was fixed shortly after the US President, Mr Donald Trump, called for the oil cartel and its allies, a group collectively known as OPEC+, to urgently stabilise global oil markets.
The alliance called an emergency meeting and was working on a deal to cut the production of oil equivalent by about 10 percent of world supply, or 10 million barrels per day, which could bring other countries to cut production, including world’s largest producer, the United States.
Pointing at the reason for the delay, there were claims that Saudi Arabia kicked against a comment made by Russia’s president, Mr Vladimir Putin, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was responsible for the spat by withdrawing from the OPEC+ deal last month. The Kingdom rebuffed this claim.
According to reports, despite this clash of words, the meeting will still hold probably this Thursday to allow more time for negotiations.
Analysts believe that the talks would likely be welcomed by oil producers and would do everything possible to have the deal done because of the overall benefit.
Most crude oil produces want prices to face south, especially Nigeria, which has its economy threatened by low revenue from the sale of the commodity. Over 90 percent of the country’s foreign earnings come from the black gold and it has been speculated that it prices continue to point south, Nigeria. Africa’s largest economy, could follow the path of South Africa, which slipped into a recession for a second time.
President Muhammadu Buhari is racing to avoid another economic crisis under his democratic government. In 2016, Nigeria fell into a recession, but got out a year later.
