Saudi Arabia and Russia quietly agreed to lift oil output

Iran accused Saudi Arabia and Russia of breaking Opec’s agreement on output cutsand said the two countries would not be able to produce enough oil to make up for a reduction in Iranian exports.

“If Iran is under sanctions, the price of oil would rise and Russia and Saudi Arabia cannot do anything to supply additional oil to the market,” Iran’s representative on Opec’s board of governors, was quoted as saying by SHANA, the oil ministry’s news agency.

Kazempour Ardebili said US sanctions on Iranian oil were “impossible”, and he called on Trump to return to the nuclear deal with Tehran.

“Mr Trump is very angry with some countries for not being able to replace the Iranian oil and has expressed this anger in his remarks to the Saudi king and to Opec for not increasing output,” he said.

“If we look at the two countries’ rise of production in comparison to their commitments in the Declaration of Co-operation, we see Saudi Arabia and Russia have had respectively a 346,000 and 250,000 barrels a day output rise, and this production rise is a violation to the agreement on output cut,” Kazempour Ardebili said.

Since the meeting in Algiers, Reuters has reported that Riyadh planned to lift output by about 200,000-300,000 barrels a day from September to help fill the gap left by lower Iranian output due to the sanctions.

Russian output rose by 150,000 barrels a day in September.

Trump made an undiplomatic remark about close ally Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, saying he had warned Saudi Arabia’s King Salman he would not last in power “for two weeks” without the backing of the US military

Reuters