UAE Energy Minister: Stop Vilifying And Then Venerating Oil Producers

• Al-Mazrouei: I think in COP 26 all the producers felt they were uninvited and unwanted but now we are again superheroes.
• The oil and gas industry needs long-term planning and investments every year despite the global push for renewables.
• Al-Mazrouei: politics around sanctioned countries should not interfere with OPEC’s broader mission.

Global oil supply and the market will not work if oil producers are vilified for years, only to be looked on a ‘superheroes’ when oil supply is lower than demand, according to Suhail al-Mazrouei, the energy minister of OPEC heavyweight the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  

“I think in COP 26 all the producers felt they were uninvited and unwanted but now we are again superheroes, it’s not going to work like that,” Reuters quoted al-Mazrouei as saying on Monday at the Global Energy Forum by the Atlantic Council in Dubai.

The oil and gas industry needs long-term planning and investments every year despite the global push for accelerating the use of renewable energy sources, the UAE minister added.

The country, currently OPEC’s third-largest producer after Saudi Arabia and Iraq, is sticking to its plan to raise its production capacity to 5 million barrels per day (bpd), but it is also committed to continue working with OPEC and OPEC+ in the management of supply to the market, al-Mazrouei said.

The UAE’s plan to raise production capacity “does not mean that we will leave OPEC+ or do something unilateral. We will work with this group to ensure that the market is stable,” he added.

During the Atlantic Council forum, al-Mazrouei “reiterated the importance of OPEC in stabilizing global energy markets and argued that politics around sanctioned countries (such as Russia) must not interfere with the organization’s broader mission.”

According to the UAE’s minister, producers cannot immediately boost supply significantly, also due to the production declines in recent years. At least 5-8 million barrels need to be replaced each year through investment, he added.

Al-Mazrouei also called on the financial and analytical institutions, such as the International Energy Agency, to adopt “realistic perspectives on long-term investment in oil and gas and recognize the needs of global consumers who need affordable energy and commodities.”

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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