Gulf oil states stand up for own interests

Input at meeting of producers group shows willingness to resist US pressure

The Gulf countries' influence on a decision by the OPEC+ producers grouping to exclude data from a Western-dominated energy watchdog in its oil market assessment suggests the Middle East countries want less dependence on the United States' policies, experts said.

An Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Plus technical discussion that took place in March ended with a unanimous decision, said to be driven by Saudi Arabia, to eliminate the International Energy Agency's numbers when assessing the state of the oil market, Reuters reported. In the lead-up to the six-hour meeting, concerns had been raised over potential manipulation of the IEA data.

The report said that the decision to drop the data reflects a buildup of frustration over what the OPEC+members reportedly saw as the IEA's bias toward its biggest member, the US. The IEA in February surprised the oil market when it revised its baseline estimate of global demand by nearly 800,000 barrels a day, under 1 percent of the roughly 100 million bpd global oil market.

It also revised an upward reassessment of petrochemicals demand in China and Saudi Arabia back to 2007, increasing the argument that OPEC should increase output quickly, the Reuters report added.

Sujata Ashwarya, an associate professor at the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia University in India, told China Daily that the fact that the IEA and OPEC are at odds on demand and supply estimates shows how the latter's relations with the West have "deteriorated on a variety of political issues".

"If economic considerations were the only factor, OPEC's Middle Eastern members would have relented and supplied, as high oil prices, while profitable, act in the opposite direction by curbing demand after a point. However, this is not purely economic," Ashwarya told China Daily.

"OPEC's Middle Eastern members, who lead the group, want to hold on to their spare capacity as a political bargaining chip."

OPEC and allies including Russia, a grouping referred to as OPEC+, have been ignoring Western calls to increase output to try to lower oil prices from around $100 a barrel amid the Ukraine-Russia conflict despite the Gulf nations acknowledging the importance of energy security.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates－key members of the OPEC－have remained reluctant to increase oil and gas exports amid pressure from the US and its allies. Qatar terminated its OPEC membership in January 2019.

"As we all know the IEA has been set up by the Western powers in order to control or show to the world that they are the ones who control the quality and quantity of the oil production all over the world, especially among the OPEC+ members," Kamaruzaman Bin Yusoff, a Middle East political analyst and former professor at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, told China Daily.

'Showing independence'

Yusoff believes that by influencing the OPEC+ decision, Saudi Arabia is "trying very hard to show the US "that they are trying to be independent after relations were strained by the ongoing Yemen conflict, among other issues.

The IEA, based in Paris, was created in 1974 and its founding members included Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Furkan Halit Yolcu, a Middle East expert and research assistant at Sakarya University's Middle East Institute, said most Gulf countries are now refusing to abide by the US' foreign policy as nations such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE "have become players in the international system".

Unlike in the 1970s, when most Gulf countries were just being established and were "dependent on superpowers" to protect them and guarantee their sovereignty, Yolcu said, these countries have built themselves up internationally and now have their own foreign policies and are trying to implement their own economic policies.

He cited Qatar as an example with its staging of the FIFA World Cup 2022 in November. "They (these Gulf countries) are trying to be more institutionalized. In terms of economic management, they want to be integrated into the international economic system and they want to take part in taking responsibility in maintaining the international economic system," Yolcu told China Daily.