Speaking on 31 October at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Emirati Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said that the OPEC+ bloc of oil producing nations will remain a “trusted technical organization to balance oil supply and demand.”

“We are only a phone call away if the requirements are there,” Mazrouei said about the possibility of boosting oil output levels, before adding that OPEC+ is “keen” on providing the world with the supply it needs.

“I can assure you that we in the United Arab Emirates, as well as our fellow colleagues in OPEC and OPEC+ are keen on supplying the world with the requirement it needs,” Mazrouei said. “But at the same time, we’re not the only producers in the world.”

Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman — who recently made headlines for claiming the kingdom is “more mature” than the US in their ongoing spat — once more defended the OPEC+ supply cut at the conference in Abu Dhabi.

“We don’t owe it to anybody but us,” the prince said to applause.

At the start of this month, the Saudi-led OPEC+ bloc — which is made up of OPEC and non-OPEC nations, including Russia — announced a major oil production cut that took US officials by surprise.

Despite intense lobbying by the White House to delay the cut until after midterm elections, the international bloc moved to cut production levels by two million barrels per day (bpd) — sending US President Joe Biden scrambling to release oil from the dwindling Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order to manipulate market prices.

“The global economy is on the knife’s edge,” Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, the managing director of the state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, insisted on Monday.

The Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference took place on the same day when state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco revealed it may cut the price of most crude grades to Asia in December, as a result of weaker-than-expected fuel sales to China due to renewed COVID-19 restrictions.

In the days following the OPEC+ cut, Aramco moved to increase the price of its oil exports to the US by 20 cents per barrel for the month of November, according to Bloomberg.