Yousuf Al-Muhaimeed
RUSSIA Today’s Arabic website recently published a report on Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi’s speech in Houston with a provocative and misleading headline: “Saudi Arabia affirms continuation of its war on shale oil.” The reality is totally the opposite.
In his speech, which has been published by many newspapers, Al-Naimi welcomed additional supply, including shale oil, to meet global demand. Russia took a negative stand on the issue as it did not cooperate with OPEC to reduce output in order to stop falling oil prices for more than a year.
Al-Naimi said: “We have never declared any war on shale or any given country or company. We are doing what every other industry representative in this room is doing. We are responding to challenging market conditions and seeking the best possible outcome in a highly competitive environment.”
These challenges and changing market mechanisms have made the issue bigger than what Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries can tackle. If OPEC members and major non-OPEC producers – mainly Russia -- fail to reach an agreement to cut output or freeze it at a particular production ceiling, oil prices would not recover gradually.
The minister had spoken on the clamor created by different parties during the last OPEC meeting in November on the issue of reducing output to boost prices. But the oil market is much bigger than OPEC. However, he said OPEC had tried its best to bring together all parties including non-OPEC producers to reach a joint agreement. Unfortunately they were not ready to bear part of the burden.
The media propaganda by Russia Today, which is aimed at misleading public opinion, is not acceptable because it goes against the facts. Saudi Arabia considers shale oil production as an important move to meet global energy demand and bring about oil market stability. It has also welcomed the US decision to export crude and Al-Naimi has mentioned that in his speech.
Those who follow the Arabic website of Russia Today, which targets the Arab world, can easily understand that its political and economic analyses on the plight of people in Syria, Yemen and other Arab countries aim to sway public opinion, reflecting its losing credibility. This website and its TV channel try their best to influence the public opinion in the Arab world through false propaganda.
