OPEC president calls on Canada to develop ties to cartel

[CHIMO]

Calgary — Canada would benefit from closer ties with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the head of the oil cartel said in Calgary Monday ahead of a visit to the Alberta oil sands.

“Canada could well get to a point where they would have to begin to listen to what OPEC is saying ... and maybe, god knows, even a common dialogue with OPEC,” Edmund Daukoru, OPEC president and Nigerian oil minister, told a gathering of reporters at a meeting hosted by FirstEnergy Capital Corp., which organized the visit.

Canada, already the No. 1 exporter of crude oil to the United States, produces about 2.5-million barrels of oil a day, putting it among top 10 global producers. Output is predicted to rise to 4.5-million b/d by 2015 as oil sands production increases. That level would make Canada the No. 4 producer in the world, behind only Saudi Arabia, Russia and the U.S.

“Our model is that we market the crude as it's produced,” Mr. Melchin told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview published Oct. 13. “It's not our policy to hold onto our resources and prevent them from being developed.”

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