OPEC: Oil production cuts continue until end of 2020 Q2

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and a non-OPEC technical panel have recommended extending a current agreement to reduce oil supply until the end of 2020, Algerian oil minister, Mohamed Akrab, announced yesterday.

Akrab – who currently holds the presidency of OPEC – told reporters that the OPEC+ Joint Technical Committee, known as JTC, had also recommended that “an additional reduction in production to be made until the end of the second quarter of 2020.”

He pointed out that the recommendations came due to what he described as the “impact of the coronavirus virus on oil demand.” The decision was made during a joint meeting between the JTC and OPEC held on Thursday.

Read: Algeria: OPEC calls for more oil cuts on coronavirus impact

“The coronavirus epidemic has a negative impact on economic activities, especially on the transport, tourism and industry, in China particularly, and also increasingly in the Asian region and gradually in the world,” Arkab said.

Saudi Arabia-led OPEC and Russia-led non-OPEC oil-producing countries had agreed last December to lower their collective output level by 1.2 million bpd and later extended it until the end of March 2020 to support crude prices.