IEA chief sees oil markets tightening towards second half of 2018

OSLO (Reuters) - The global oil market could tighten towards the second half of 2018 if demand remains robust and key producers continue their current policies, International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol said on Tuesday.

"If we have strong demand growth and if producers continue to stick to their policies we may well see tightening of the markets... I expect this sometime next year, towards the second half of the next year...," he told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy conference in Norway.

Birol was speaking ahead of the OPEC's meeting on Thursday amid concern that its efforts to rebalance the oil market might overshoot by creating a global deficit and spurring a further price rally.

"It's up to OPEC countries to decide what are they going to do, but what we see is that the market is already on its way towards rebalancing... Therefore the price (of oil) that we have today, above $60, is a good number for most oil investments to be profitable," Birol said.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Louise Heavens)