“This flexibility should be finalised, and we should hear some solid suggestions coming from all parties,” Mahdi told reporters at a conference in Kuwait.

As Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world’s biggest oil producers, reel from the one-two punch of plunging oil prices and, in Moscow, international sanctions, the two powers are reportedly mulling big changes to boost oil prices and their own coffers.

OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia, have exceeded their official output targets for months, turbocharging production to maintain market share and bump out U.S. drillers. Russia, which draws close to half its revenue from oil and gas, pushed its production to a record high in the face of a budget choked by Western restrictions on financing and the lowest crude prices in more than a decade.

Production in Russia, however, is more costly than conventional drilling in Saudi Arabia, and with crude fetching only bargain-basement prices, both nations are hurting.

“Russia, Saudi Arabia and other oil producers are haemorrhaging money,” says Paul Sullivan, an economics professor at National Defense University and an adjunct at Georgetown University.

Even so, the two nations have been loath to switch course before, let alone coordinate on production levels: “From our point of view, it is unlikely that all the countries within OPEC can agree on production cuts, let alone those countries which are not in the OPEC coalition,” Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak reportedly said earlier this month.

Yet with the world awash in 1 million surplus barrels of oil a day – and with Iran working to bring online another 500,000 more following an international accord aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief – that view may be changing.

Earlier this month, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman stunned investors by acknowledging the kingdom was considering an IPO of its oil giant, Saudi Aramco – a possible signal of just how badly the state is hurting for cash.

And this week, Iraqi Oil Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said Moscow and Riyadh now seem open to a coordinated cut in production – the sort of move that could drive benchmark prices $10 to $20 higher from $30, where they’ve hovered of late.

“This flexibility should be finalised, and we should hear some solid suggestions coming from all parties,” Mahdi told reporters at a conference in Kuwait.

It’s the kind of rumoured collaboration that’s stirred up markets before: Last fall, similar speculation spurred a three-day gain in crude prices. But it remains a slim prospect at best.

“Production cuts from Russia tend to be problematic, for the reason that the country’s mature oil wells tend to freeze up and are hard to restart,” says Steven Kopits, head of Princeton Energy Advisors.

It’s also far from certain whether the strategy would work: When OPEC cut oil production in an attempt to drive up prices in the 1980s, the void was simply filled by non-OPEC countries. Prices didn’t suddenly rise, and OPEC lost huge market share.

Meanwhile, the price of benchmark Brent crude oil this month had already fallen by more than 20 percent since early January.

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