MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) must decrease oil production costs to ensure successful competition with shale oil producers, Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu said Wednesday.
"OPEC must lower production costs to compete with shale producers," Kachikwu told CNBC Africa in an interview.
OPEC sealed a deal on November 30, 2016, agreeing to cut its oil output by 1.2 million barrels per day for the first six months of 2017 in an effort to stabilize the oil market and bring oil prices to the healthy range of $50-60 per barrel less than $30 per barrel in January 2016. The deal went into effect in January. Eleven non-OPEC countries, including Russia, Mexico and Kazakhstan, later joined the deal, pledging to reduce production by a total of 558,000 barrels per day on a voluntary basis.
