Kremlin: Work on Oil Output Freeze Must Continue with Big Producers
Russia must continue working with some other leading oil producers on a proposal to freeze crude output at January levels in order to stabilize world oil prices, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
The comments indicated Russian President Vladimir Putin is not prepared yet to commit Russia fully to a deal on freezing production that was tentatively agreed in Doha last money, especially given uncertainty about whether Iran will sign up to the agreement.
Oil prices have fallen by over 70 percent since a peak in June 2014, driven by an global oversupply which is in excess of 1 million barrels per day.
Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak negotiated the first potential global oil pact in 15 years in the Qatari capital in February, along with representatives of OPEC member states.
However, neither Putin nor Igor Sechin, Russia’s most powerful oilman and the head of the world’s biggest listed oil company Rosneft, have publicly endorsed the deal. On Tuesday, Putin had a meeting with Russia’s main oil producing companies to talk about the Doha agreement.
“It was stressed that work with other large (oil) producing nations needs to be continued, because there is still uncertainty about some other producers – some have joined (the Doha group) but there are countries which have not made their intentions clear enough,” Peskov told a teleconference with journalists.
On Tuesday, Novak said the domestic oil companies backed the idea of an output freeze. He also said Russia planned to negotiate with other non-OPEC and OPEC nations for a potential meeting in March to try to agree a final decision on a freeze deal.
Data showed on Wednesday that Russia’s oil output in February was unchanged, at 10.88 million barrels of oil per day.
