Algeria's energy minister has said there is a consensus among OPEC and non-OPEC members about the need to stabilize the oil market to support prices, state news agency APS reported on Saturday.
Noureddine Bouterfa was speaking after meeting Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khalid Al-Falih and OPEC Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo in Paris late on Friday.
Bouterfa has traveled to Qatar, Iran and Russia this week to push for the oil price to be stabilized between $50 and $60, and said he was "confident" about the outcome of an OPEC meeting to be held in Algiers on Sept. 26-28.
Bouterfa said Algeria would submit a proposal to steady prices at the meeting. "Our discussions with our partners show that there is a consensus around the necessity of stabilizing the market. That is already something positive," Bouterfa said.
"We are in contact with the members and the secretary-general of OPEC and that is part of this work of achieving a consensus and I am optimistic."
"There is support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Venezuela, Kuwait, and from non-OPEC countries, notably Russia."
Barkindo told APS, in remarks published later, that OPEC was not seeking a definite price range for oil but rather "sustainable stability" for the market.
Asked after the Friday meeting what reasonable price OPEC was targeting, he said: "This is not what we are seeking at the moment."
Algeria is hosting a meeting of the International Energy Forum alongside the OPEC meeting later this month, and Bouterfa said he had discussed both sessions with Al-Falih and Barkindo in Paris.
Algeria is among the oil producers to have taken a heavy hit from the halving of oil prices over the past two years.
Earlier, oil prices fell more than 3 percent on Friday.
Traders cited hopes for a global deal on stabilizing crude output after Saudi Arabia, the leading oil producer inside OPEC, and Russia, the biggest producer outside the group, agreed on Monday to cooperate in oversupplied markets.
Brent crude was down $1.73 at $48.26 a barrel by 1:24 p.m. ET (1824 GMT) after rising above $50 for the first time in two weeks on Thursday. US crude was down $1.52 at $46.10.

Source: Arab News