Oil market, prices to return to balance by 2017: IEA chief

Tokyo

INTERNATIONAL Energy Agency (IEA) chief Fatih Birol said on Thursday that he expects the oil market to come back into balance from oversupply by next year, providing that there is no major economic downturn.

Mr Birol said that low oil prices have cut oil investment by about 40 per cent in the past two years, with sharp falls in the United States, Canada, Latin America and Russia, and the world's reliance on Middle East oil will accelerate substantially in the next few years.