Nigeria and Saudi Arabia are holding talks to stimulate oil price that has bottomed out over the last 20 months, Presidential spokesperson, Garba Shehu, has said.
President Muhammadu Buhari who is on a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss ways to stabilize prices, was quoted to have told Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, that the two countries need to work together to achieve a stable oil market
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, has been suffering from a slump in crude prices that has eroded vital oil revenues and hammering its currency.
“The two leaders accepted the fact that their two economies are tied to oil and that all cannot be well with both countries when the world oil market is unstable,” said Buhari’s spokesman, Shehu.
They therefore committed themselves to doing all that is possible to stabilize the market and rebound the oil price,” he added. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela said last week, had after talks in Doha last week, agreed that they were ready to freeze production at January levels if other producers did the same.
Iran’s Oil Minister was quoted on Tuesday as saying the proposal was “laughable” because it did not allow that country to regain market share it lost during sanctions. But during his visit to Riyadh, Buhari is expected to fly to Doha to discuss oil price stability with Qatar’s ruler.
Meanwhile, oil prices fell 4 per cent on Tuesday, sliding to $33.36 per barrel, after Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Al-Naimi, ruled out any production cuts, restating the Kingdom’s rationale for maintaining output was that demand would pick up excess crude that has crushed prices over the past 20 months.
Excepts from TheSun
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