Chakib Khelil: “Saudi Arabia has achieved its goal, and world oil prices will stabilize”

“The world oil market is going towards stabilization,” Chakib Khelil, former Algerian minister of energy and mines, said in an interview with “Bloomberg Television” in his first media appearance since the end of the high-profile trial of the “Sonatrach1” bribery case in which he was cited by a host of defendants for alleged wrongdoing and malpractice while he was in office.

 “Saudi Arabia has achieved its objective to cut non-OPEC production” and the output freeze is “a good start that we can build on” to rebalance the world oil market, he said.

The agreement to freeze output includes Qatar and Venezuela and is the “beginning of a process” that could require “other steps to stabilize and improve the market,” Chakib Khelil surmised.

The Saudi kingdom pumped 10.2 million barrels a day last month, according to latest data. Russia produced 10.9 million, a post-Soviet record.

While Nigeria, a fellow a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, backs the freeze, Iran and Iraq should be allowed to recover lost market share, he affirmed.

“We welcome that non-OPEC countries are also negotiating” ways to control prices, Iraq’s Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said Monday in an interview in Tokyo. “Iraq is very much cooperative on controlling the market price, in the interest of trying to increase the prices.”