Al-Naimi’s remarks in Al-Hayat newspaper came ahead of Friday’s OPEC meeting in Vienna where the organization decided to stick to its policy of unconstrained oil output for another six months.

He told the newspaper the market was witnessing an increase in demand for oil with a slight improvement in global growth and that supply from outside of OPEC member countries had declined.

“I am 100 percent comfortable with the market situation, but prices are a different issue,” he said.

Asked whether it was impossible to return to the $100 per barrel price level, Al-Naimi told the newspaper: “I tell the world, don’t be preoccupied with prices as they are determined by the market and there are a lot of speculators and the market has several elements and prices change daily up and down.”

On whether the market would see the $100 a barrel level again, he said: “God knows, nobody can predict that.”

The minister explained why he was not worried about the return of Iran and Libya’s crude to the market and a possible increase in the levels supplied to the market by Iraq.

“I know the oil trading sector well, today the world consumes 93 million barrels per day (bpd) and if we deduct liquids and others, the global consumption reaches 75 million bpd and the annual natural decline rate is 10 percent which means the world loses every year 7.5 million bpd so you can compensate these volumes through drilling new wells.”