Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has been named the as the Conference President of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.
Kachikwu who doubles as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission replaces the immediate past petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who was elected to that position in November 2014.
Alison-Madueke was the first female president of OPEC when she was elected at the 166th ordinary meeting of the organisation.
President Muhammadu Buhari named himself as Nigeria’s substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources with Kachikwu as the minister of state, who runs day-to-day affairs of the ministry.
It was difficult to predict the position of the oil cartel given that it might be preposterous for a sitting president of a member state to assume that position.
But OPEC in a recent update on its website named Kachikwu as the head of the OPEC conference.
Kachikwu, who spoke in Lagos on his key agenda while in the position said that he would make persuasion of Iran to delay flooding the market with oil in order to ensure a stable market first. .
According to him, “I think the key thing will be obviously crude oil price. There is a lot of sensitivity on that, $42 currently and with potential to go down if Iran throws their barrels into the field.
“My first target as I meet with ministers one-on-one is to try to delay Iran’s flooding of the market to the last quarter of next year. I will be talking with Iran’s oil minister on that so that we can stabilise the price.
“Maybe, hopefully, by the first or second quarter of next year, we will begin to see how that statement can now embolden us to go and begin to address removing the 1.5mbpd production that is lying in the market internationally.”
