Algeria highlights role in rebalancing oil market

By Murat Temizer

ISTANBUL (AA) - Algeria, in efforts to rebalance oil prices in the market, played an active role in the latest OPEC and non-OPEC meeting, according to Mustapha Guitouni, Algeria's energy minister on Wednesday.

Guitouni spoke at the ministerial session of the 22nd World Petroleum Congress, of which the Anadolu Agency is the global communication sponsor.

The minister said that satisfactory results were achieved after OPEC's latest meeting on May 25 when almost all the countries adopted an oil production cut decision.

He said that Algeria would continue to play an active role in the creation of dialogue between OPEC and non-OPEC countries.

The Algerian minister also said that countries, such as Algeria with plentiful oil and gas resources, have to improve their performance and be more innovative in the upstream and downstream sector.

"We have to use technology at the optimum level to get better returns, we have to better evaluate our resources and the oil sector has to continue to invest," he said.

He also said although Algerian has sufficient energy access in which the entire population has access to electricity, one of the most important targets in the energy sector for Algeria is to make large-scale electricity production.

"We intend to do this with renewable resources, we foresee more solar power generation, we want to improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption," he said

Guitouni stressed that Algeria is aware of the threat of climate change and is mindful of this trend when deciding on power generation sources.

He said that renewable energy, especially solar energy, would be very important in the future, but the share of fossil fuels would also continue to be high.