By  Trend

OPEC will continue its attempts to adjust the oil market despite a number of external factors affecting the energy market, Afshin Javan, Modelling and Forecasting Analyst at OPEC and expert in petroleum economics, told Trend.

“OPEC will try to adjust the oil market, although there are many stochastic externalities in the energy market, such as geopolitical tension - currently between US and North Korea, level of commercial inventories and also US tight oil production,” he said.

Expert also believes that oil market will rebalance in second half of the current year.

“I don't predict significant changes in oil prices as everything in energy market is related to the oil demand and global GDP growth rate in the coming months,” he added.

In late 2016 OPEC agreed to slash the output by 1.2 million barrels per day from Jan. 1, with top exporter Saudi Arabia cutting as much as 486,000 barrels per day. Non-OPEC oil producers such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, Sudan, and South Sudan agreed to reduce the aggregate output by 558,000 barrels per day. The agreement was signed for a six months period, extendable for another six months.

In May, all the participants of last year's agreement agreed to extend it for another nine months.