The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has said that the Document of Cooperation between the cartel and non-OPEC members has stabilised the oil market.
OPEC Secretary General, Haitham Al Ghais, in a statement, on Saturday, to mark the 6th year of the agreement added that it has also helped in securing global energy security.
The six year old DoC signed by 23 oil producing countries aims to secure sustainable oil market stability through cooperation and dialogue, including at the research and technical levels, for the benefit of all producers, consumers and investors, as well as the global economy at large.
Al Ghais said: “The Declaration of Cooperation is an unprecedented collaborative framework of 23 oil-producing countries that is based on trust, mutual respect and dialogue. Six years later, the framework continues to play an instrumental role in supporting market stability, which is essential for growth and development, as well as attracting the necessary investment to ensure energy security.”
The commitment of the DoC participants to a stable oil market he said has once again been evident following the severe oil market contraction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The OPEC scribe added that “these efforts have supported the global pandemic recovery process, and have been recognized at the highest levels of government and by other international organizations and academia”.
It would be recalled that on December 10 2016, OPEC member countries and Azerbaijan; the Kingdom of Bahrain; Brunei; Darussalam; Equatorial Guinea, which later joined OPEC; Kazakhstan; Malaysia; Mexico; The Sultanate of Oman; The Russian Federation; The Republic of Sudan; and The Republic of South Sudan, met at the OPEC headquarters, in Vienna, and decided to establish the DoC as a platform for cooperation and dialogue in the interest of oil market stability.
Other producers attended the meeting in support of these extraordinary efforts.
“The pivotal decisions taken at the inaugural OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial meeting built on the successful ‘Algiers Accord’ signed in Algiers, Algeria, on 28 September 2016 at the 170th (Extraordinary) meeting of the OPEC conference and the subsequent ‘Vienna Agreement’ decided on 30 November of the same year in Vienna, Austria, at the 171st meeting of the OPEC conference,” Al Ghais said in the statement