Saudi Arabia has launched an initiative to set up a billion dollar OPEC fund to help poorer countries cope with high oil prices. In addition, the Kingdom plans to offer a half billion dollars in soft loans, through the Saudi Development Fund, to countries struggling to make oil purchases at the elevated prices on the world market. Some of the Saudi money would go to finance energy development projects that would make countries less dependent on oil.
King Abdullah personally announced the creation of these efforts to help developing countries cope with high oil prices. King Abdullah also called on the World Bank to set up a conference for donor nations to discuss these initiatives.
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi recently said that the kingdom is willing to produce more than the 9.7 million barrels of oil a day for the rest of the year if the need arises. He also said that the Kingdom will invest a further $129 billion in the energy sector over the next five years to help increase production capacity. The Minister added that 'the current status of oil markets doesn't please anyone and that things are not in the interest of either consumers or producers'.
The King said that his country's policy, since the establishment of OPEC, has been based on adopting a fair price for petroleum that is beneficial to both the producers and the consumers.
'Starting from this policy, we have been allocating a great part of our income for the assistance development, and in the last few months we have increased our daily production of petroleum from nine million barrels to 9,700,000 barrels and we are ready to meet any additional requirements in the future', the King said.
