Venezuela's Maduro: Next OPEC Meeting May Take Place in First Quarter of 2017

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro held a meeting on Monday with OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo and proposed to hold the next meeting of OPEC and non-OPEC countries in the first quarter of 2017.

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) — Maduro said that the OPEC countries and non-OPEC will be able to discuss further steps on stabilization of a global oil market at the meeting.

"We discussed the necessity to hold the next summit of OPEC and non-OPEC members in the first quarter of the year, during which we will be able to take further steps on the basis of the agreed plan aimed at stabilization of the [global oil] market and providing fair prices for the next five or ten years," Maduro said after the meeting as quoted by the Noticias 24 news portal.

In November 2016, OPEC agreed to cut oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day to 32.5 million barrels per day for the whole cartel starting 2017. On December 10, OPEC finished a meeting with non-OPEC countries in Vienna, at which non-OPEC countries decided to cut oil output by 558,000 barrels per day, with Russia cutting the output by 300,000 barrels per day from January 2017.

According to Maduro, this is a historic agreement, as it has created a partnership relations between OPEC members and non-cartel oil producing states, such as Russia.

Oil market turbulence caused oil prices to plunge from $115 per barrel in June 2014 to less than $30 per barrel in January 2016, causing hardship for oil exporters. Prices then recovered to over $40 per barrel before rallying to over $55 per barrel after the deal.

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