“We are running on thin ice, if I may use that term, because spare capacity is becoming scarce, The likelihood of a squeeze is there,” Al-Ghais said.
Still, the OPEC chief remains confident that world oil demand will increase by almost 3 million barrels a day this year, bolstered by China’s return from Covid-related lockdowns. Al-Ghais’ decades of experience at Kuwait Petroleum Corp. included opening the company’s first Beijing office in 2005. The 23-nation group, an amalgam of OPEC nations and non-members, explained that it had to ration its “severely limited” reserves of output with “great caution.” OPEC and its partners hold idle capacity of roughly 2 million to 3 million barrels a day, or about 3 per cent of world output, Al-Ghais said.