OpeOluwani Akintayo
26 September 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos — Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu has said the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, is targeting an oil price of $60 per barrel.
He made the statement during a live broadcast on Bloomberg TV on Tuesday.
Brent’s crude oil price as at today is around $52 per barrel.
As at Monday, 25th September, OPEC’s daily basket crude oil price per barrel pegged at around $55p/d.
Kachikwu, when asked about the price target of the group, simply said “a figure close to US$60 a barrel”.
OPEC and Non-OPEC oil producers especially Russia, have been saddled with the responsibility of boosting price since the genesis of oil crash in 2014.
As a result, the group alongside with others agreed to cut production by 1.8 million barrels per day starting from January through March 2018.
However, oil prices have been hovering between $50p/d and $56p/b since the cuts, worsened by the shale oil boom in the United States.
Before the hurricanes late August, forecasts by the Energy Information Administration, EIA, said shale oil production will grow by 6mb/d between August and September, projecting an increase of 117,000bp/d to 6.15mb/d in September.
Shale production topped 6mb/d in August.
Driller in Texas and New Mexico’s Permian Basin that are the centre of shale oil recovery had planned to boost drilling by 64, 000b/d in September to a total of 2.6mb/d, EIA had said.
While output from the Niabrara region was to rise by 15, 000b/d, with the South Texas likely to boost production by 14, 000b/d, North Dakota’s Bakken was to jump by 12, 000 and 10,000b/d respectively.
However, with the hurricanes, production was disrupted, prompting EIA to revise forecast down a bit above 6mb/d, 6.08mb/d for October.
According to the group, the output from several shale oil and gas producing regions will grow by a combined 79, 000b/d in October, marking the first time its projection would go below 100, 000b/d.
Now, oil price which hovered around $50b/d before the hurricanes, might just be heading towards OPEC’s dream of $60p/b.
