OREANDA-NEWS. Kuwait's national representative to OPEC and senior official at state-owned KPC Mohammed al-Shatti has questioned the premise of a planned informal meeting of Opec producers alongside the International Energy Forum (IEF) in Algiers next month.

"A producers meeting without a result or agreement — meaning a large decline in oil prices — is not in the interest of producers or the market or prices, so the question is why hold a meeting?" said al-Shatti. "It is not in the interest of any producer — without exception — for the oil prices to collapse, as everybody suffers from huge financial burdens and commitments that require that the oil prices recover to $50/bl."

His remarks follow comments by a Mideast Gulf Arab Opec delegate yesterday that there is no agenda for the Algiers meet. The delegate said: "There is still too much confusion ...We will not have an idea of what is going to happen until we are closer to the [meeting] date."

Al-Shatti called out producers for boosting crude production in the current oil price environment. "The race to increase production and maintain stocks presents a perfect recipe for prices to collapse, and without a doubt it is not in the interest of anyone. Let us remember the beginning of 2016 and how prices collapsed," he warned.

"The rebalancing in the market has begun; however, its timing is as of yet unclear amid an ongoing rise of production within OPEC and from Russia, in particular," al-Shatti said.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and the UAE boosted crude production by a collective 270,000 b/d in July over June levels, according to Argus estimates. Saudi Arabia declared a record production figure of 10.67mn b/d for July.

But al-Shatti remains cautiously optimistic that oil producers could shed their differences in favour of an agreement that supports oil markets. "There is still time for shuttling to reach an agreement between producers, especially within Opec, to come out with an agreement that leads to rebalancing the oil market and recovery of oil prices," he said. "Responsibility for restoring market balance and recover of oil prices is not the responsibility of a single producer; rather, it is the responsibility of all producers. Co-operation is therefore the only solution and one that benefits everyone."

But Venezuela has attempted to drum up support for some kind of production restraint, sending high level delegations to a number of Opec and non-Opec producing countries. And that met with little success. "Nothing has changed," a Venezuelan presidential palace official told Argus last week. "No one else in Opec shares Venezuela's sense of urgency on the need for concerted Opec and non-Opec action."