A committee set up by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to monitor the compliance of members and non-OPEC members with the global pact to cut oil output, are to meet at the beginning or in H1 of January, according to Kuwait's oil minister.

“We will meet in January with OPEC and non-OPEC countries and we will coordinate over the method in which (compliance with) the cut will be implemented. I personally think that the announcements coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, and Russia are all encouraging signs that they will abide by the cut and hopefully other countries will follow suit,” Essam Abdul Mohsen Al-Marzouq, Kuwait’s oil minister, told Reuters on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) in Cairo.

The monitoring committee includes Algeria, Kuwait, Venezuela, and two participating non-OPEC countries, chaired by Kuwait and assisted by the OPEC Secretariat, is to closely monitor the implementation of and compliance with this Agreement and reports to the Conference.

OPEC at the end of November, in Vienna decided to reduce oil production by 1.2 million barrels per day and freeze output at 32.5 million barrels per day.

The decision was supported by 11 non-OPEC countries, including Russia, which concluded their first deal since 2001 on December 10, 2016, with the organization to reduce their production by about 558,000 barrels per day from January 1, 2016 so as to ease a global oversupply after over two years of low prices.

Anita Fatunji