Man Who Moved Oil With His Words Won't Talk About It Anymore

EghtesadOnline: For more than two decades, the oil market hung to Ali al-Naimi’s every word -- whether he was taking a characteristic stroll at dawn on Vienna’s Ringstrasse, hurrying through a hotel lobby after a conference, or dodging throngs of reporters at an OPEC meeting.

News ID: ۷۷۴۲۹۶

02 March 2017

Now that he’s done with his near 21-year stint as Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, during which his utterances could move everything from crude to currencies and stocks worldwide, al-Naimi says he doesn’t want to talk about the market anymore, Bloomberg reported.

“As far as oil prices and oil, I have left that behind,” he said on Friday at an event in Singapore to launch his book ‘Out of the Desert: My Journey From Nomadic Bedouin to the Heart of Global Oil’.

Now that he’s done with his near 21-year stint as Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, during which his utterances could move everything from crude to currencies and stocks worldwide, al-Naimi says he doesn’t want to talk about the market anymore.

Al-Naimi’s successor, Khalid Al-Falih, has marshaled a different oil-market strategy. OPEC and some other producers including Russia started cutting output last month as part of a deal aimed at easing bloated global inventories, with Saudi Arabia making significant curbs to its production. But that’s also prompted a resurgence in U.S. drilling and an increase in the flow of crude from rivals to the group’s prized Asian market.

Brent crude, the benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, traded 0.5 percent higher at $56.24 a barrel on the ICE Futures Europe exchange by 4:11 p.m. London time. Prices were at more than $115 a barrel in mid-2014.

In his book, al-Naimi strongly defended the no-limits approach he convinced OPEC to adopt. The best way to re-balance the market is still to let supply, demand and prices work, he wrote.

At Friday’s event in Singapore, when asked about his views on OPEC complying with the deal to cut output and whether Russia would keep its promise of reducing production, he stopped and thought for a moment. Then he said sorry and left the venue without commenting.