Saudi-Russia Tensions Growing Ahead Of Key OPEC+ Meeting

Days ahead of the key OPEC+ meeting on June 4, the leading producers in the group, Saudi Arabia and Russia, are at odds about output policy. 

Riyadh has grown increasingly frustrated with Russia, which apparently hasn’t kept its end of the deal and isn’t reducing oil production as pledged, complicating the Saudi efforts to lift oil prices to at least the Kingdom’s oil price breakeven level of $81 per barrel.   

So, officials from Saudi Arabia have expressed their frustration with Russia and have asked Russian officials that Moscow stick to its pledge to reduce oil production by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) until the end of the year, sources with knowledge of the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Russia insists that it is cutting output as planned, but analysts aren’t convinced, and since Moscow has ceased any official reporting about its production levels, the market looks at tanker-tracking data. And the data suggests that even if Russia is following through on its commitment to cut output, its oil supply to international markets is growing, especially in the key Asian markets long dominated by Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern producers—China and India. 

With cheaper crude, Russia has been aggressively growing its market share in Asia’s top two importers and is now the number one supplier to both China—where it toppled Saudi Arabia from the top spot earlier this year—and India, where Russia is now selling more crude than Iraq and Saudi Arabia combined, per Vortexa data cited by the Journal.

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