Roydad Naft News Agency – Austria’s foreign minister will not attend an OPEC conference in Vienna next week, the Financial Times reported on Friday, but the ministry clarified that he never planned to attend, rather than having pulled out of the event.

A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg told Reuters that his ministry had never informed OPEC he would attend and that he had wrongly been added to the event’s schedule.

The FT reported that Schallenberg’s office said his decision not to attend was due to “scheduling” issues, and emphasised the role of press freedom.

OPEC has withheld media access to reporters from Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to cover a meeting of oil industry CEOs with energy ministers from OPEC and its allies, reporters and people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

OPEC has declined to comment on why reporters from the three media organisations were not invited to cover the OPEC-hosted July 5-6 seminar.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+, includes top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia.

OPEC+ pumps more than 40% of the world’s oil supply.