DUBAI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, the group known as OPEC+, are able to increase oil supply if there is market demand, United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei told Asharq TV on Monday.
The UAE has the capacity to supply additional volumes of crude to the market if needed and if agreed by the OPEC+ group, he said in an interview to the Dubai-based channel.
At a meeting last week, OPEC+ stuck to a plan to raise oil output by 400,000 barrels per day on a monthly basis, snubbing calls from the United States to go beyond this volume in order to keep oil prices in check. Mazrouei said in the interview that the UAE and its OPEC+ partners may continue with the policy until September 2022, to reach the output level seen before the coronavirus pandemic. The current policy of adding 400,000 bpd a month can lead to an excess in supply in the first quarter of 2022, he said, expecting the U.S. to continue to draw from its strategic petroleum reserves until 2025.
Speaking the same day at a conference in Dubai, Mazrouei said insufficient investment in the oil and natural gas industry could lead to a hike in energy prices.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba, Nadine Awadalla and Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
