Baku, Azerbaijan, April 19
By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:
After the Doha oil talks fiasco, oil prices began reducing rapidly, Eldar Kasayev, representative of the expert council of the Russian Union of Oil and Gas Producers, told Trend via e-mail.
Kasayev added that this trend will continue.
The expert said that the market has nothing to rely on except the groundless rhetoric of some players.
"According to these players, the OPEC oil exporters and non-OPEC member-states still will be able to come to a consolidated decision to freeze the oil production," the expert said.
Kasayev added that the April 17 meeting in Qatar demonstrated a lack of any effective dialogue in the OPEC and non-OPEC member-states format due to acute political and economic disagreements among key negotiators.
"Saudi Arabia will not assist Iran, which has been a "lump in the throat" for Saudi Arabia for a long time," he said. "The reason is that Iran prevents Saudi Arabia to hold a dominant position in the Muslim world."
The oil producers' meeting held Apr.17 in Doha on oil output freeze ended without an agreement. The event was attended by representatives of 17 countries. The meeting kicked off about 6.5 hours later than the fixed time.
Reportedly, the meeting was delayed as Saudi Arabia unexpectedly said it wants all OPEC countries, including Iran to participate in the output freeze. Iran wasn't represented at the meeting.
Earlier, the country's Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh said that Iran did not participate in the process that led to the imbalance of the global oil market, and therefore does not intend to freeze the oil production.
The expert believes that the OPEC meeting to be held in summer will unlikely bring positive results, since the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran will continue, while the attempts of Russia, Venezuela and other states to reach out to Riyadh or Tehran are doomed to fail.
"Since oil prices react to expectations, traders may well once again use the information about the upcoming meeting of oil exporters to influence the prices," the expert said.
He said that there are still no fundamental factors for the growth of prices for raw materials, while the speculative factor remains.
"The oil market will probably be unstable this year, as it was in 2015," said Kasayev. "It's not worth expecting speedy stabilization of prices. However, in the medium term, the situation will improve, and that will happen not as a result of bilateral or multilateral agreements of oil suppliers, but due to the fact that the supply will meet the demand."
World oil prices continue to decline during trading on Apr.19.
On Apr. 19 morning, the June futures for Brent (North Sea) crude oil at the London-based ICE Futures exchange fell by $0.23 to $42.66 per barrel. The May futures for WTI crude oil declined by $0.4 to $39.67 per barrel as of Apr. 19 morning.
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