Saudi Arabia says Russia not cutting enough oil

Russia is not cutting as much oil production as it could be under the agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries to cut oil output, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said in an interview for the CNBC news channel.

“The agreement with Russia was three hundred [thousand bpd] that would be achieved by the first quarter, so one hundred, one hundred, one hundred. Three hundred by the end of March. January was a pleasant surprise. They did extremely well in January. February was not so good, they did not do well enough,” the minister said.

Earlier at the conference, Al-Falih said that Saudi Arabia, which exceeded its commitments to cut production, would not allow other countries to take advantage of this.

“I had a constructive good meeting with Alexander Novak, my colleague from Russia. He informed me that the first week of March has been very positive. They’ve added another 40,000 bpd of cuts, so they’re at 160,000 bps,” he said.

He said that Russia was cutting production “slower than I would like. I think we are patient and we will see where we are in May,” he said.

When the agreement to cut production was reached in Vienna, Novak said that Russia would cut production by 300,000 bpd in April-May. On March 7, Novak said in Houston that Russia would achieve this plan at the end of April.

He said that Russia had already fulfilled 50 percent of its obligations and by the end of March it would cut production by almost 200,000 bpd.

Novak said that the figures for January and February confirm Russia’s position that it is meeting its requirements to cut production at an even quicker pace than was initially planned.