Saudi Arabia plans to go beyond OPEC's deepest ever single cut in supply as the world's top oil exporter looks to halt a slide that has lopped over $110 off the oil price since July. The Kingdom will pump below its OPEC target in February and is prepared to go further still to bring a market battered by falling demand and a global recession back to balance, Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi told reporters on Tuesday. “We will do what it takes to bring it back to balance,” he said on arrival in India for an energy conference. The Saudi supply target was 8.05 million barrels per day (bpd), a little under 10 percent of global output, after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) agreed to its biggest ever cut in December. “It will be lower,” Naimi said of February output. The Kingdom was currently pumping around 8 million bpd, he added. Naimi declined to comment on whether the move was taken in anticipation of a further cut in output by OPEC. Oil prices were below $37 a barrel on Tuesday. King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques has said that $75 would be a fair price. Industry sources on Sunday told Reuters that Saudi Arabia planned to cut by up to 300,000 bpd below its OPEC target in February, a proactive step to balance the oil market. The reduction would take Saudi output to around 7.7 million bpd, some 2 million bpd below its pledged output in July.
