OPEC+ may continue to ease cuts at the gradual pace it set in July, despite calls to boost supply to tame high prices. According to the energy minister of one of OPEC’s heavyweights, the United Arab Emirates, the oil market will see a surplus in the first quarter of 2022.

Suhail al-Mazrouei, the UAE’s Energy Minister, told Reuters on the sidelines of the ADIPEC energy meeting in Abu Dhabi that: “All of the data are showing us in the first quarter we will have a surplus of supply compared to demand” despite the current deficit on the market.

OPEC+ does not want global economic growth to stagnate, al-Mazrouei said, a week after major oil consumers like the United States and Japan warned that the OPEC+ alliance’s refusal to increase supplies could stymie the recovery from the pandemic.

“But at the same time, we cannot just pump more when there is no technical requirement for it. We are a technical organisation, we are not going to do political decisions,” he told Reuters.

In a separate interview with Bloomberg, the UAE’s energy minister said, “That should be enough,” referring to the monthly increase of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the collective production of the OPEC+ group.