REUTERS
United Arab Emirates' Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said Wednesday he was confident the crude oil market will get balanced on its own, as there are already signs it is stabilizing, defending OPEC's decision last year to keep the production ceiling unchanged despite the plunge in oil prices, according to The National, the leading English-language publication in the Middle East.
"We are going to let the [oil] market stabilize itself," said Al Mazrouei.
"When that happens will depend on how much we work together as one team, and not depend on one player to fix the market," the minister said at a conference in Dubai.
According to the minister, producers of low-priced oil, such as many OPEC members are, should not play the role of swing producers, trying to influence oil prices by reducing or increasing output.
"The fact we have more competition in the market means we need to do something to correct that behavior," the minister said.
That correction was the decision that the OPEC members, which account for about 40% of the global oil production, made in November last year to not cut its output to protect its market share rather than prop up prices.
This shift in strategy led to a petroleum supply glut because U.S. shale oil producers continued to pump at will, driving down oil prices to shed more than half their value since mid-2014.
OPEC next meets in Vienna on December 4 to discuss its output ceiling, which it kept unchanged at 30 million barrels per day at its last meeting in June.