Oil producing countries of OPEC should fully comply with agreed production cuts instead of trying to compensate for the cuts, said Saudi Arabia Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman on Thursday.
In his speech during the opening ceremony before OPEC's 22nd Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC) on oil market developments, Salman said 'compensating should not become the norm [of OPEC].'
'We must strive to put the compensation scheme behind us and implement it before the year end,' he said.
Salman said full compliance was 'not an act of charity' but a sovereign decision that all member countries took 'willingly and responsibly' amid the global coronavirus pandemic crisis.
Recalling that OPEC decisions were influential to direct the expectations of the oil market in the face of uncertainty, Salman warned that the compensation mechanism was not established to substitute for full compliance or to encourage non-compliance.
'Confronted with overproduction, we had no choice but to push for compensation to ensure fairness and cohesiveness among the group,' Salman said.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak, for his part, urged for resilience, unity and consistency in the face of the current challenges 'which we face in the interest of long-term stability and predictability of global economic recovery.'
Reminding that the coronavirus had significant and material damage to all sectors of the economy, Novak said the representatives of OPEC would discuss demand recovery for oil, factors preventing the international oil productions to go back to pre-crisis metrics, which are leading to downward revisions of global GDP growth.
Algerian Energy Minister Abdelmadjid Attar pointed to 'clear sign that economic recovery is underway,' however, underlined the importance of 'relentless vigilance and the commitment' of the member countries while complying with the OPEC cuts.
By Sibel Morrow and Firdevs Yuksel
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr