1
QUITO — Ecuador plans to officially rejoin OPEC at the cartel's next meeting in November as part of President Rafael Correa's promise to revive its flagging crude industry, Oil Minister Galo Chiriboga said Monday.
Ecuador, which is South America's No. 5 oil producer with an average crude output of 530,000 barrels per day, left the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in 1992, partly because it was crowded out by crude heavyweights.
When asked if the country was going to officially rejoin OPEC at the group's next meeting, Mr. Chiriboga said: “The president has asked for the Ecuadorean state to rejoin OPEC.”
OPEC presidents meet in Riyadh for their third summit Nov. 17-18 and the cartel's next ministerial meeting is set for Dec. 5 in Abu Dhabi.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration says Ecuador was the 11th biggest foreign oil supplier to the United States, shipping an average 189,000 bpd during the first seven months of this year.
Ecuador has repeatedly said this year it plans to rejoin OPEC. But the Andean country's output is dwarfed by OPEC's unofficial leader, Saudi Arabia, which has a production capacity of more than 10 million bpd.
The president of OPEC-member Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has backed Ecuador's bid to rejoin the group. But analysts say Mr. Correa's drive to rejoin OPEC is likely a political move to bolster the country's status on the international stage.
Left-wing allies Chavez and Correa have moved to increase energy cooperation between their countries. But Ecuador's state company Petroecuador has seen its output hit by slumping investment and a rash of protests in its key Amazon wells.
