President Donald Trump’s inaugural pledge to free up the U.S. oil industry and block the Biden administration’s push toward renewable fuels has been met with a muted response from Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer after the United States.
Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser was asked about what President Trump’s pledge to “drill, baby, drill” to significantly increase U.S. oil production would mean for OPEC countries. , said it was confident that rising global oil demand, particularly from China, would cushion the impact.
“I still think the market is healthy,” Nasser told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Last year, we averaged about 104.6 million barrels per day. This year, we expect an additional demand of about 1.3 million barrels, so the market is growing.”
Meanwhile, UAE Minister of Economy Abdullah bin Touk expressed frustration with the European Union for keeping his country on the “blacklist” of countries with insufficient anti-money laundering measures.
Bin Tuk said the UAE would hold talks with the EU to resolve the issue. “I don’t understand why the UAE is still on the blacklist,” he told Bloomberg in an interview in Davos. The UAE was removed from a parallel “grey list” last year following a decision by the Paris-based watchdog Financial Action Task Force.
On Tuesday morning at the Pavilion on the Davos Promenade, the UAE delegation was joined by Mohammad Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, Saeed Bassar Shweb, CEO of International Holding Company, and Mariam Almheiri, CEO of 2PointZero. We hosted a breakfast talk.
