'No intention' of 1973-style oil embargo, says Saudi Arabia

London

SAUDI Arabia has no intention of unleashing a 1973-style oil embargo on Western consumers and will isolate oil from politics, the Saudi energy minister said on Monday amid a worsening crisis over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"There is no intention," Khalid al-Falih told Russia's TASS news agency when asked if there could be a repetition of the 1973-style oil embargo.

Top US lawmakers turned their ire on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Sunday and said that they believed he ordered the killing of Mr Khashoggi, although the Trump administration maintained a more cautious stance.

Several US lawmakers have suggested imposing sanctions on Saudi Arabia in recent days while the kingdom, the world's largest oil exporter, has pledged to retaliate to any sanctions with "bigger measures".

"This incident will pass. But Saudi Arabia is a very responsible country. For decades, we used our oil policy as responsible economic tool and isolated it from politics," Mr Falih said.

"My role as the energy minister is to implement my government's constructive and responsible role and stabilising the world's energy markets accordingly, contributing to global economic development," he added.

He said that if oil prices went up, it would slow down the global economy and trigger a recession. But he added that with Iranian sanctions coming into full force next month, there was no guarantee that oil prices would not go higher.

"I cannot give you a guarantee, because I cannot predict what will happen to other suppliers," Mr Falih said, when asked if the world can avoid oil prices hitting US$100 per barrel again. "We have sanctions on Iran, and nobody has a clue what (the) Iranians' export will be. Secondly, there are potential declines in different countries like Libya, Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela," he said.

"If three million barrels per day disappear, we cannot cover this volume. So we have to use oil reserves," he said. Mr Falih said that Saudi Arabia would soon raise output to 11 million barrels per day (bpd) from the current 10.7 million bpd. He added that Riyadh had capacity to increase output to 12 million bpd and the United Arab Emirates, a Gulf Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) ally, could add another 200,000 bpd.

"We have relatively limited spare capacities and we are using a significant part of them," he said.

Global supply next year could be helped by Brazil, Kazakhstan and the United States, he added.

"But if you have other countries to decline in addition to the full application of Iran sanctions, then we will be pulling all spare capacities," he said. REUTERS