Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, reiterated Saturday that the Kingdom is ready to pump more crude oil if needed to stabilize volatile prices. Addressing a press conference ahead of the Jeddah Energy Meeting (JEM), which will be inaugurated by King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, Prince Abdul Aziz said: “We will meet the demand. If demand requires more crude, we shall sell it.” “The Kingdom's (production) policy is based on supply and demand. If there is more demand, it is natural to offer more crude,” he said. The minister said the Kingdom was aiming to stabilize the oil market. “The Kingdom aims at restoring stability to the world's oil price,” which has been highly volatile in the past few years, he said. “We prefer continuity, stability in prices.” But he added that he did not know if other OPEC members would join Saudi Arabia in raising output. However, he acknowledged that finding a quick solution to high prices was very difficult. “Some people might want an instant solution to high oil prices. I think this is a very difficult thing,” he said. Prince Abdul Aziz said a working paper agreed by Saudi Arabia, OPEC, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Energy Forum (IEF) will be discussed during Sunday's meeting. “The paper's sole purpose is to discuss the issue of current oil prices and how to draw a collective way to deal with this situation,” he added. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted he was not going to simply urge increased supply but urge producer countries to invest more in renewable energy. “I am going to Saudi Arabia to see if we can get a new deal between oil producers and the consumers where oil producers will invest in countries like ours, and oil consumers like us with good companies, with good technology and skills can invest in the oil-producing countries,” he told The Guardian newspaper in an interview published Saturday. Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Saturday that “speculators” are not driving up global oil prices. “There is no evidence that we can find that speculators are driving prices,” Bodman told a press briefing ahead of the oil summit. “This capital is following the market upward, it is not leading.” – With input from agencies __
