MOSCOW, May 10 (Reuters) - OPEC is effectively extinct as aunited organisation and the time when it could determine globaloil market conditions should be forgotten, Igor Sechin, head ofRussia's biggest oil firm Rosneft, told Reuters.
The comments are the first from Russia's most influentialoil executive after leading crude producers failed to agree tofreeze output to support prices at a meeting in Qatar lastmonth.
Sechin, a long-standing ally of President Vladimir Putin,has expressed sceptical views about OPEC before, saying that topoil producer Russia should stick to its own strategy and protectits market share.
"The 1970s, when a series of the largest Middle Eastproducers could determine global oil market conditions bycreating cartel structures such as OPEC, should be forgotten,"Sechin told Reuters in e-mailed comments.
"At the moment a number of objective factors exclude thepossibility for any cartels to dictate their will to the market.... As for OPEC, it has practically stopped existing as a unitedorganisation." (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Katya Golubkova;Editing by Alexander Winning/Andrew Osborn)
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