"Tomorrow's meeting is a very informal consultative meeting
between the countries that happened to be here," Falih told
Reuters at the World Energy Congress in Istanbul.
"Unfortunately due to prior commitments I am leaving now so I
will not be in the meeting but I will be following it from afar
and I will be getting indications about what countries have
agreed to," he said.
OPEC officials are embarking on a flurry of meetings to nail
down details of an agreement reached in Algiers last month on
modest oil output cuts, the first such deal since 2008.
Falih said he had met with Russian Energy Minister Alexander
Novak in Istanbul, and described the energy conference in the
Turkish city as a "great step forward".
"From the meetings I have had on the sidelines of this
conference today and yesterday ... it is quite clear that many
countries are not only supportive of the OPEC decision in
Algiers but are enthusiastically willing to join," he said.
"We are not talking about support, we are talking about
contribution in the direction we are seeking which is basically
that we are going to attempt to speed up the balancing process
that is already underway."
Falih said those efforts were not about the oil price itself,
but about sending a signal to the oil industry to start
investing again.
(Writing by Nick Tattersall)
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