NEW DELHI - Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih said on Friday oil markets are rebalancing and he expected inventories to continue declining this year.

"The oil markets, it's clear, are rebalancing," said Falih, who is on a two-day India visit since Thursday.

"This is a period of soft demand as we all know because of seasonality. Refineries are undergoing maintenance as well as low consumer demand but the data speaks for itself."

"Many agencies have documented the decline in inventories and I think that'll continue in 2018," Falih said, adding that he hoped markets would stabilise.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma and Sudarshan Varadhana; Writing by Devidutt Tripathy; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani) ((devidutta.tripathy@thomsonreuters.com; +91 84518 40430; Reuters Messaging: devidutta.tripathy.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))