OPEC, its allies may see oil output cuts easing in 2019: Saudi Arabia

OPEC and its allies, including Russia, may next year ease the crude-output curbs that have helped prices recover from the worst crash in a generation, according to Saudi Arabia’s oil minister.
 

With the market moving toward equilibrium and bloated inventories shrinking, the next step for global producers will be to phase out the reductions, Khalid Al-Falih said. The nations taking part in the supply curbs are currently studying what a crude re-balancing will entail, and will announce their next steps once that’s analysed, he said.
 

The production curbs may be eased “sometime in 2019, but we don’t know when and we don’t know how,” Al-Falih said. “What we know is that it’s going to be done in a way that it will not in any way disturb the balance and undo the hard work since 2016.” A deal between OPEC and its partners aimed at shrinking a global glut that began in 2017 and runs through the end of this year.