UAE minister of energy rejects speculations on oil prices

United Arab Emirates Minister of Energy Suhail Mohammed Al-Mazrouei said here on Tuesday that he does not agree with recent predictions by leading investment banks that oil prices would fall further.

"With shale oil production increasing in the United States, nobody can predict oil prices any longer nor can any oil producing state dictate the price of oil," Mazrouei said, addressing a one-day Gulf Intelligence UAE energy forum.

Mazrouei was referring to speculations by the United States investment bank Goldman Sachs and French bank Sociétée Générale that oil prices would decline further in the first six months of 2015.

Oil prices hit a 5.5-year low on Monday as U.S. crude oil prices fell to 45 dollars per barrel after Goldman Sachs said oil price would drop further in the first half of 2015 until reaching a balance.

Oil prices have fallen 60 percent since they peaked in June 2014 due to the rise of shale oil production in the United States and elsewhere and because some Arab states such as Iraq stepped up production, according to research firm Gulf Intelligence, the organiser of the forum.

The UAE harbours around 8 percent of the globally known oil reserves and it is a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The minister criticized an OPEC decision in November to maintain production at 30 million barrels a day to prevent the "black gold" from falling further.

"In the past when OPEC tried to stabilize prices, the cartel had been mostly wrong," he said.

"The price of oil is not the only parameter OPEC is looking at," he said, adding that the UAE oil production and investments into new projects would go ahead as planned. Endit