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Russia warns against increasing oil output

April 6, 2020 at 9:02 am

An exchange board is seen on 30 March, 2020 [Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency]

Increasing oil production will not serve the interests of any country, Russia warned yesterday, stressing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking “constructive negotiations aimed at stabilising the global energy market.”

“Russia did not back the termination of OPEC+ deal – The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,” Russia Today (RT) quoted the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, as saying. “President Putin and the Russian side in general are determined for a constructive negotiating process, and there is no alternative to it in terms of stabilising international energy market,” he said.

Peskov pointed out that Saudi Arabia had introduced what he described as “an unprecedented discount and boosted oil production,” adding that the move had led to “a situation where all oil storage facilities in the world could be filled.”

“Tankers are already used not for shipping oil but as floating canisters,” he noted. “Finally, we will just get an absolutely minimum oil price, which is not advantageous for any country,” Peskov continued.

Oil prices have fallen sharply since Russia and OPEC members failed to agree on an oil production cut of an additional 1.5 million barrels a day in early March. Concerns over the market impact of the coronavirus outbreak are compounding the price fall.

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