Asked if he was comfortable with oil prices around $ 50 a barrel, Sheikh Ahmad said: “Yes, of course. It goes with the economic situation”.
Oil prices have collapsed from a record near $ 150 in July as the global financial crisis batters the world economy, forcing some oil producers to cut state spending.
US crude was trading just over $ 52 a barrel on Friday. It hit its highest level so far in 2009 on Thursday at $ 54.66 a barrel on expectations that efforts by the US government to tackle bad debts and shore up the economy would boost demand.
Qatar’s Oil Minister Abdullah Al Attiyah said it was too early to say if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) should cut output again at its next meeting in May. Oil was unlikely to trade above the range of $ 40-$ 50 a barrel this year due to weakness of the global economy, Attiyah said on arrival in Kuwait ahead of an energy conference.
“It is still related to negative growth and the economy, it’s still the crisis, it has not reached bottom,” Attiyah said.
Kuwait’s oil minister said OPEC was monitoring the level of compliance with previously agreed cuts. “Everybody who does not comply will pay the price,” Sheikh Ahmad said. “The price is not reaching the (price) level they want.”
OPEC has agreed cuts of 4.2 million barrels per day since September. The group delivered about 80 percent of those cuts in February, according to a survey.
The group called for full compliance from members at a meeting earlier this month, and kept its formal output targets unchanged.
Meanwhile, the next Kuwaiti cabinet will decide whether to proceed with a $ 15bn refinery project that was halted due to procedural flaws, the official KUNA news agency said Sunday, citing the oil minister.
Kuwait last week notified four South Korean companies, a Japanese firm and US giant Fluor that contracts to build the 615,000-barrels per day refinery was cancelled after opposition MPs insisted the process should have passed through a state-run committee to ensure transparency.
“A decision on the fourth refinery project will be made after the formation of the new cabinet,” Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah al-Sabah told KUNA.
