Saudi Arabia can reduce oil output in 2019, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said.
According to him, Riyadh can reduce daily production in December by 500,000 barrels as compared to November in response to other manufacturers’ requests about it. Khalid Al-Fatih made this statement despite the fact that so far OPEC+ has not announced any changes in oil production.
Five days earlier, Iran called Saudi Arabia and Russia for reducing daily oil production to 1 million barrels, because its prices fell by $15 due to the increase in production rates.
OPEC and other major exporters decided to increase oil output by 1 million barrels for six months at the summit in June 2018. The initiative was proposed by Moscow and Riyadh. Prior to that, the 2016 OPEC+ agreement was in effect, according to which production declined totally by 1.8 million barrels per day. The agreement was prolonged twice; the deadline was the end of 2018.
On November 5, amid the introduction of a new package of US sanctions against Iran, which, in particular, restricted the purchase of Iranian oil, the price of Brent crude dropped below $72 a barrel.
