The attention of the global oil and gas community will shift to Doha, capital of the State of Qatar, venue of today’s crucial oil-producing countries ministerial meeting conveyed to seek remedy to the lingering decline in the price of crude oil in the international market.
Pressure to reach a deal to freeze production to boost prices follows the hastened pace at which the world’s top oil exporters have depleted their foreign reserves.  OPEC nations have spent $315 billion of their foreign-exchange reserves, about a fifth of their total, since the oil slump started in November 2014. Saudi Arabia accounts for nearly half of the decline in foreign-exchange reserves among oil producers, with $138 billion or 23 per cent of its total, followed by Russia, Algeria, Libya and Nigeria. In the final three months of last year, Saudi Arabia burned through $38.1 billion, the biggest quarterly reduction in data going back to 1962. In the last three months of 2015, reserves fell nearly $54 billion, the largest quarterly drop since the crisis started. Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu is already in Doha where preliminary meetings among top oil producing ministers has commenced.
 

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