El-Badri Asks Global Oil Producers to Assist with Curbing Oil Glut

The head of OPEC asked oil producers outside of the organization to help reduce the global oversupply, once again making it clear that OPEC won’t make output cuts alone.

“It is vital the market addresses the issue of the stock overhang,” Secretary-General Abdalla El-Badri said Monday at a conference in London. “It should be viewed as something OPEC and non-OPEC tackle together.”

Crude sank to the lowest in more than 12 years this month as supply swamped demand. With OPEC effectively abandoning its output ceiling in December, Russia pumping near record levels and U.S. shale fields proving more resilient than forecast, the global surplus has continued to swell. Yet an agreement between OPEC and rival producers to rein in volumes has proven elusive as all parties seek to maintain their market share.

“It is crucial that all major producers sit down to come up with a solution to this,”El-Badri, 75, said at the Chatham House think-tank. Stockpiles in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries rose to more than 260 million barrels above the five-year average at the end of 2015, he said, adding that the market may start to rebalance this year as demand grows.