Italy’s Minister of Industry Claudio Scajola and Brazil’s Energy Minister Edison Lobao were among consumer-nation officials attending the Jeddah summit that said more supply was needed to ease prices. “We expect Saudi Arabia to open the taps,” Austrian Economy Minister Martin Bartenstein said in an interview two days ago. “One third of inflation in the euro zone comes from energy and inflation is now of importance.”
Speaking in Jeddah today, the Austrian minister said: “We would like to see more oil on the market. That is the only action I can think of that can discourage the speculators.”
Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG, and other analysts maintain that consumers will need to curtail demand before prices head lower. The biggest drop in prices in 11 weeks came on June 18, after the world’s second-biggest oil consumer, China, raised gasoline, diesel and power prices to rein in energy use.
Saudi Arabia will increase production capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day of oil by the end of next year and could add a further 2.5 million barrels a day if needed, from some new giant fields, Naimi said.