Do Saudi Arabia And Russia Really Want Higher Oil Prices?

Authored by Kurt Cobb via OilPrice.com,
The jawboning of oil prices by the Saudi Arabian/Russian tag team should be wearing off after more than a year of actions that don’t measure up to the words. Oil prices slumped recently, dropping from around $54 per barrel to just below $50 as of Friday’s close.
As if on cue, the Russian energy minister announced Friday that Russia has now met its target of reducing oil production by 300,000 barrels per day. It took four months to do something that should have taken just weeks. (The agreement came into force on January 1.) And, of course, we’ll have to see if the Russians have actually done what they say they’ve done.
Only a week earlier, the Saudi energy minister indicated that there is momentum growing in OPEC for extending production cuts beyond June for another six months. This announcement comes only six weeks after the same minister said that OPEC would NOT be considering extending the cuts. This is reminiscent of last year’s run-up to the production agreement in which Russia and Saudi Arabia kept alternating in making often contradictory announcements to sow confusion about the possibility of a production agreement and keep markets on edge without actually having to do anything.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on May 5, 2017.