2 Jun 2023 15:51

Russia in contact with OPEC+ partners, won't announce its proposals - Peskov

MOSCOW. June 2 (Interfax) - Russia remains in contact with its OPEC+ partners but will not disclose the proposals it will make at an OPEC+ summit on Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"You know that no one ever announces such things, not even specialists do. So naturally, we will not announce this either," Peskov said.

"I can only say that Russia remains in contact with the respective participants in this process," he said.

An OPEC+ ministerial meeting will be held in Vienna on June 4 in an in-person format. The previous meeting in this format was held in October 2022. At that time, the sides agreed to cut daily oil production by two million barrels to the level of August 2022. The cuts were extended through to the end of 2023.

At the beginning of this year, Russia announced that it would voluntarily cut oil production by 500,000 barrels per day in March as compared to February. The cuts were first extended until July, and later on until the end of the year. Russia achieved the target in May.

As of May 1, a number of OPEC+ countries joined Russia in cutting oil production, with output being reduced by 500,000 bpd in Saudi Arabia, 78,000 bpd in Kazakhstan, 211,000 bpd in Iraq, 144,000 bpd in the United Arab Emirates, 128,000 bpd in Kuwait, 48,000 bpd in Algeria, 40,000 bpd in Oman and 8,000 bpd in Gabon. As a result, the overall output cut will be about 1.657 million bpd, or 1.2 million bpd without Russia. The countries intend to keep production at this level until the end of 2023.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who supervises energy affairs, told reporters a week ago that Russia would discuss what's best for the market with OPEC+ partners, but would stick to earlier decisions. "OPEC+ group meetings are intended for joint discussion of the state of the market and reaching a consensus on future actions that must be carried out to reach market balance. This is a systemic approach that will also be the basis of the OPEC+ meeting in June, where decisions could be made if necessary," he said. "Russia will participate in the discussion together with its partners in order to determine what is best for the market, while adhering to all previous decisions," Novak said.

In an interview with Izvestia published on May 25, Novak said he did not see any reasons for OPEC+ countries to take any new steps at their upcoming meeting. "I don't think that there will be any new steps, because it was literally a month ago that certain decisions were made regarding the voluntary reduction of oil production by some countries because we saw slow rates of recovery in the global economy," Novak said. "Our job now is to monitor the situation on the market and respond promptly," he added.