Saudi Arabia opposes the use of the oil weapon as an Arab lever to apply pressure in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the kingdom's Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said in an interview published Monday.
"Our states are using their oil revenues for social and economic development," he told the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat."And it is important to keep these revenues, which we can use to support the Palestinian cause or any other Arab action," said Nuaimi, whose country is the world's top oil producer and exporter.
After the outbreak of the 1973 Middle East war, in contrast, Saudi Arabia led a movement by Arab producers to exert political pressure on the West for its support of Israel by limiting supplies, leading to a rocketing in prices.
Turning to the situation on the oil market, Nuaimi ruled out further OPEC output increases although oil prices have stubbornly remained above $30 dollars a barrel.
"We must be cautious from now on about supply increases," he said, adding that the current high crude prices were not linked to supply and demand but other factors, including the unresolved US presidential election.
"World stocks have started to climb," the Saudi oil minister said, warning that any fresh OPEC hike would amount to "great danger for the market, which we want to shield from instability".
But Saudi Arabia and other OPEC producers, he said, were still prepared "to make up for any shortfall in the wake of natural disasters or political measures aimed at cutting supplies".
Nuaimi was referring to sanctions-hit Baghdad, which is threatening to suspend its UN-supervised exports in a dispute with the United Nations over control of Iraqi oil revenues.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse.
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
