IEA Chief Energy Economist Birol Says Oil Prices to Stay High

(Bloomberg) — World oil prices are likely to remain high “for many years to come” as demand increases and national oil companies lack an incentive to increase production, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency said.

“The current drivers of demand are different” while higher oil prices no longer represent “an incentive” to produce more oil, Fatih Birol said at a seminar in Brussels today. Resource- rich nations and their national oil companies get enough revenue and see no need to increase production to ease prices, he added.


The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which supplies more than 40 percent of the world’s oil, hasn’t increased production since Nov. 1, when it began pumping an additional 500,000 barrels a day. The group is “doing its best” to stabilize oil prices, Qatar’s minister of state for energy and industry affairs said today. OPEC kept output quotas unchanged at a meeting on March 5.

OPEC holds its next formal, policy-setting conference in September. Many OPEC ministers will hold informal discussions during a conference April 20 to April 22 in Rome. The IEA is an adviser to 27 energy-consuming nations.

Bloomberg