Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi: “Algeria is in need of every dollar”

OPEC will take a “consensual step” at the group’s Thursday meeting in Vienna when discussing how best to shore up crude oil prices, Algeria’s Energy Minister said on Tuesday in Algiers.

“This step is necessary to bring back stability,” Youcef Yousfi told local media outlets. However, the energy minister did not specify possible measures.

Brent crude oil prices declined to around $80 dollars a barrel on Tuesday, ahead of the much awaited meeting of OPEC oil producers, who are expected to decide on output levels for next year.

Oil market watchers do not agree on the action OPEC members countries may and will take at their meeting in the Austrian capital of Vienna. Predictions range from a large production cut to bolster the prices, to a small reduction, or none at all.

OPEC “will study the market evolutions, imbalances that caused this decline in oil prices and consult on the way to restore market balance,” Mr Yousfi underscored.

OPEC nations supplying 40% of the world’s oil will increasingly test the price at which North America’s surging crude output is profitable by maintaining production as demand slumps, the International Energy Agency said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries boosted output by the most in 13 months in September, even as prices plunged into a bear market and demand growth weakens to a five- year low, the Paris-based adviser to governments said in a report today. Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the largest and third-largest members of OPEC, have indicated the price slump doesn’t warrant immediate production cuts, the IEA said.

The U.S. and Canada between them pumped the most crude since at least 1965 last year, according to data from BP Plc. OPEC members will test if that output can be sustained at lower prices, Antoine Halff, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, said by phone from Paris Oct. 14.

 For most of the past decade, OPEC would have responded to surpluses by cutting output, Halff asserted.

“This is a new situation and will likely elicit a new response from OPEC,” he said. “U.S. shale includes different situations, different economics depending on the players. I’m not sure U.S. shale is definitely the highest cost production, I see more pressures in Canada for instance. But we’ll test that.”

Brent crude, a benchmark for more than half the world’s oil, fell as much as 3.1% to $86.17 a barrel Oct. 14, heading for the lowest closing price since November 2010 on the ICE Futures Europe exchange.

The OPEC crude basket, made up of the group’s main export grades, fell to $85.93 the day before, near a four-year low.