Barkindo: OPEC Rescued Oil From Collapse

EghtesadOnline: Oil producing group OPEC is responsible for salvaging the entire oil industry with its deal to curb output, OPEC's secretary general told CNBC, but the US shale revolution has helped to prevent "major, major energy chaos" in the world.

News ID: ۷۴۶۸۱۴

02 March 2019

"OPEC has been doing a great service," to producers and global oil markets, Mohammad Barkindo told CNBC in Riyadh.

"The decisions that OPEC took, together with our non-OPEC partners, literally rescued this industry from total collapse," he said.

Asked for his perspective on the US Congress' consideration of antitrust legislation that could hurt OPEC–specifically, the "No-Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act" (NOPEC) bill that could allow OPEC to be sued for coordinating production and influencing oil prices – Barkindo said actions taken by OPEC had in fact helped US producers, according to Financial Tribune.

"You can ask the producers in the shale basins in the US whether they have benefitted from the actions we have taken over the years," Barkindo said.

"In particular, during this longest cycle where we saw prices crash by over 80% at one point, where we saw the supply and demand balance in (a period of) disequilibrium that had never been witnessed, where we saw more than 100 US companies file for bankruptcy with all the negative consequences on the industry, the regions where they operate … no party was insulated," he said.

Oil prices fell dramatically from a high of around $114 a barrel in June 2014 to a low of around $27 a barrel in January 2016 amid a sharp imbalance in supply and demand.