OPEC Sec Gen Warns It's No Time for Complacency

This is no time for complacency. 

That’s according to OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, who made the statement at the 30th Meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee late last week.

Although Barkindo outlined that China and the U.S. continue to fuel the growth prospects for the year, with demand expected to grow by six million barrels per day to around 96.5 million barrels per day on average, he warned that Covid-19 is a “persistent and unpredictable foe”.

“Vicious mutations remain a threat to both human health and the recovery,” Barkindo said in his statement, which was posted on OPEC+’s website. “Furthermore, many leading economies are pumped up by record levels of fiscal and monetary stimulus, debt levels have soared, and inflation is beginning to rear its ugly head in some countries,” he went on to say.

Barkindo highlighted that, month on month, OPEC+’s actions continue to support the rebalancing process and have helped reduce global supply by more than 2.9 billion barrels since May last year. He pointed out, however, that there continues to be “significant” overproduction by some of the participating countries and said these overproduced volumes need to be accommodated.

OPEC+ failed to reach a new production deal at its July 1 meeting and at continued talks on July 2. The group is now scheduled to meet on July 5 at 3pm, CEST, via videoconference.

As of July 2, 5:41pm CEST, there have been 182,319,261 confirmed cases of Covid-19 globally, with 3,954,324 deaths, according to the latest information from the World Health Organization (WHO), which shows a rise in global weekly cases in its most recent data, following eight straight weeks of decline. As of July 1, a total of 2,950,104,812 vaccine doses have been administered around the world, the WHO’s latest figures show.

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