OPEC official sees no need for more crude

Crude oil supply does not need to increase because rising prices reflect bottlenecks in gasoline supply, OPEC’s head of research said on Friday, despite calls from consumers for more crude.

“I think that pumping more crude into the market is not needed,” Hasan Qabazard, head of OPEC’s research division, told Reuters. “We have a bottleneck in the supply chain and the bottleneck is the refineries producing gasoline for the summer.”
Qabazard, the top research official at the group’s Vienna headquarters, said the return of oil refineries from maintenance would help boost fuel stocks and lead to lower prices.

“Eventually, when refineries are at full throttle and the gasoline stocks, which have already started to rise, will rise more and that will push the prices down,” he said.

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