OPEC, the world’s largest oil cartel, is looking for new members, the group’s secretary general told reporters Wednesday, according to CNBC.
Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais told reporters at a Vienna conference that he is actively working to grow OPEC — currently comprised of 13 members based primarily in the Middle East, Africa and South America — noting that he had recently visited several oil-producing countries including Malaysia, Brunei, Azerbaijan and Mexico, although he stressed that he was not suggesting those countries in particular had been invited to join OPEC, according to CNBC. The cartel has been working alongside Russia and other nonmember nations in the larger OPEC+ alliance to prop up oil prices via a string of production cuts, to mixed results.
“The first half of the year, it hasn’t really panned out the way it was expected not only by OPEC, I would say, but by most,” al-Ghais said in an interview with CNBC. “So we’re thinking that it could materialize in the second half of the year, with China opening up, maybe at a more rigorous rate than we’ve seen so far, [with] hopefully a settling of the economic conditions in the European and the U.S. systems.”
Al-Ghais also argued that OPEC’s recent production cuts were necessary to build up an international stockpile that could respond to a potential supply crunch forecasted by the International Energy Agency earlier this year, CNBC reported. He criticized what he characterized as an “underinvestment” in oil by non-OPEC nations, calling for “everybody to step up.”
“Spare capacity is tight, I would say … And our countries are investing,” said al-Ghais, according to CNBC. “But it’s a global responsibility. OPEC cannot shoulder this on its own. We have to have everybody step up.”
While U.S. President Joe Biden recently approved the massive Willow oil project in Alaska, his administration faced legal hurdles to block the project outright and simultaneously banned drilling on millions of acres of Alaskan federal land. The White House has recently been meeting with environmentalists and oil interests, which some in the oil and gas industry are taking as a sign that stricter regulations are inbound.
OPEC did not immediately respond to a Daily Caller News Foundation request for comment.
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