Small non-OPEC producer Oman believes that an OPEC production deal is now more in sight than it was a few months ago, Omani Minister of Oil and Gas Mohammad bin Hamad al-Rumhy told the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference (Adipec).
Oman is ready to cut if OPEC reaches a deal, the minister added.
"First of all, we call for cutting down of oil production and reaching an agreement between oil producers on the issue; in this case Oman is ready to cut down oil production by 5-10 percent. The second option for us is a freeze," Rumhy told reporters on the sidelines of the conference, as quoted by news agencies.
Al-Rumhy noted that the oil market was still oversupplied.
"Maybe we have seen the bottom, but we don't know how long this bottom will last," Reuters quoted the minister as saying.
A month before the Algiers meeting, Oman - whose crude oil production is expected to average more than 1 million barrels per day this year for the first time ever - was much more disillusioned. At that time, Oman had definitively said it would not join the informal meetings in Algeria because it was disappointed that the cartel hadn't managed to enact any measures to remedy low oil prices.
More recently, Oman has said it was officially supporting an output freeze and overall reduction, with the expectation that "similar measures be taken by other countries."
Oman was one of several non-OPEC producers that had sent representatives to the OPEC-non-OPEC meeting held in Vienna on October 29 to discuss possible details of production limits. The other non-OPEC representatives included Russia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Brazil, and Bolivia. Neither OPEC nor outside-OPEC producers, however, have officially said anything of significance about the outcome of those talks.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry. More