- Seeks the OPEC+ decision to extend global supply pact deferred to another meeting
- OPEC’s Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) makes production hike conditional to the extension of the agreement
The UAE said on Sunday it supports an increase in oil production in August and proposed that OPEC+’s decision on extending its global supply pact beyond the expiry date of April 2022 should be deferred for now.
UAE Ministry of Energy said in a statement the country believes the market needs an increase in production. It added the UAE has supported production increases in May, June and July and the terms of increase had no extension conditions attached to them.
“So it makes no sense to attach conditions to increase in August,” the statement said.
Thursday’s meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and its Russia-led allies, dubbed OPEC+, failed to agree on how to meet fast-rising demand from the industrialized world, as the club of rich nations emerges from pandemic lockdowns.
The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) of the OPEC, the statement said, had made the increase in production conditional to the extension of the current agreement.
“This would prolong the UAE’s unfair reference production baseline until December 2022, from the existing agreement end date of April 2022,” the ministry said.
The ministry said the UAE is willing to extend the agreement further, if required, but requests that baseline production references–the level from which any cuts are calculated– be reviewed to ensure that they are fair to all parties when an extension is agreed to.
The UAE suggested that this decision should be made in a later meeting, allowing an immediate unconditional decision on increasing production from August to progress.