The Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister S. Jaipal Reddy has called upon oil producing and consuming countries to work together to build trust and share market data to establish demand certainty in international oil markets.

Addressing a Session of 5th OPEC International Seminar in Vienna today, Mr. Reddy advocated instilling confidence among oil producing countries to undertake required investments to produce larger quantities of incremental oil and gas and reduce the influence of extraneous factors in oil price formulation.

A press release issued in New Delhi said that Mr. Reddy also emphasized that in an oil-importing country like India, higher international oil prices lead to domestic inflation, increased input costs, an increase in the budget deficit which invariably drives up interest rates and slows down the economic growth.

He said, higher oil prices raise the cost of fertilizers and hence, the cost of food. The Minister added that high oil prices benefit neither oil producing nor consuming countries.