Oil Prices: OPEC, Non-OPEC Producers to Meet in April

OPEC members and key oil producers from outside the cartel will meet on April 17 in Doha in a bid to stabilise falling crude prices, Qatari energy minister Mohammed al-Sada said Wednesday.The meeting is a “follow-up” to last month’s talks between Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela when they proposed an accord to freeze oil output at January levels, said a statement from Sada, the current OPEC president.
He said 15 countries accounting for some 73 per cent of global oil output supported the initiative, including the world’s top exporter Saudi Arabia, and Russia.
Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said this week that the meeting will “probably” be held in April.
But Novak’s comments put pressure on oil prices after he indicated Iran could be excluded from a freeze deal to allow it to increase its crude production after Western sanctions over its nuclear programme.Oil prices, which have plummeted more than 60 per cent since mid-2014 partly because of oversupply, recently recovered slightly following talk of an output freeze.
One of the world’s biggest producers, Iran, returned to the export market in January.