OREANDA-NEWS. A meeting between Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi and Venezuelan energy minister Eulogio del Pino ended in Riyadh yesterday, with no mention from either side about any agreement to curtail oil production in order to support prices.

Del Pino was in the Saudi capital for the last leg of his tour of major oil-producing countries to drum up support for Venezuela's latest attempts to stabilise oil prices and ultimately reverse the 70pc slide in prices since the middle of 2014. Del Pino's meeting with Naimi followed visits to Moscow, Tehran, Doha and Muscat where he had held talks on the current state of the market.

Front month Ice Brent Futures are still languishing below $35/bl, down from $114/bl in June 2014.

Venezuela, which relies almost exclusively on oil revenue to run its economy, has been leading calls for a meeting between Opec and non-Opec producers to co-ordinate a production cut that would bring world oil supply back in line with demand.

Speaking on 7 February, Naimi said he had held "successful" talks with del Pino in which they discussed the current state of the oil market and ways in which Opec members should co-operate with producers outside the group to help stabilise the market. The discussions also centred on the outcomes of del Pino's meetings in the lead up to the Riyadh meeting.

"It was a successful meeting that was held in a positive atmosphere," Naimi said without elaborating.

Saudi Arabia in January was producing 10.17mn b/d, Argus estimates, 560,000 b/d up on what it was producing in November 2014, when it first guided its fellow Opec members to adopt this market share policy, despite growing calls from producers outside Opec to cut production in the face of falling oil prices.

The meeting with Naimi concludes what has been a difficult tour for del Pino, who was sent with what Venezuela's state news agency AVN describes as "specific instructions... to build consensus among the oil-producing countries" to work together in order "to achieve a balance and fair price of oil". Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh and Iraqi oil minister Abel Abdul Mahdi have both previously said that they would only support and join an emergency Opec meeting on the condition that there was a pre-arranged consensus and decision to take action.