Saudi Arabia\u2019s energy minister emerged from days of heated OPEC talks joking that he wasn\u2019t an easy man to be friends with.<\/p>\n
Ariana News Agency-<\/strong><\/em> Yet, the deal Khalid Al-Falih hammered out to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels a day, which sent oil prices soaring on Friday, was based on Saudi Arabia shouldering the lion\u2019s share of the cuts. It also relied, to an unprecedented extent, on Russia to broker an agreement between the Saudis and their archrivals, Iran, and acknowledged implicitly that there\u2019s little the kingdom could do to hurt surging U.S. oil shale without causing itself pain.<\/p>\n \u201cSaudi economic self-interest trumps Trump,\u2019\u2019 said Mike Rothman, president of Cornerstone Analytics Ltd., a veteran of three decades of OPEC meetings.<\/p>\n The outcome of the marathon talks in Vienna shows how OPEC was able to pull off a juggling act. Al-Falih\u2019s dilemma: cut production and anger President Donald Trump, or let oil prices plunge and risk damage to a Saudi budget that requires oil prices above $70 a barrel in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cLow prices are actually not good for the U.S. economy,\u2019\u2019 Al-Falih said, a riposte to Trump\u2019s repeated calls for OPEC to open the taps. \u201cI know for a fact that oil and gas producers in the U.S. are probably breathing a sigh of relief that we\u2019re providing some certainty and visibility for 2019.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s Tweet For Al-Falih, the willingness to cut production represented a shift. In a speech last year in Houston, he insisted that his country would not surrender market share to the U.S. The kingdom, he said, supported intervening in the market to address \u201cshort-term aberrations\u2019\u2019 and not \u201clong-term structural imbalances.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saudi Arabia\u2019s energy minister emerged from days of heated OPEC talks joking that he wasn\u2019t an easy man to be friends with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_mat_hreflang_tags":[],"addvideo":"","video_duration":"","farsit":"","target":"0","top_stories":"0","top":"0"},"categories":[305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":{"myctype":"change","target":false,"top_stories":false,"top":false,"farsit":""},"yoast_head":"\n
\nOn Twitter Wednesday, Trump urged OPEC not to restrict oil flows, but since then has not publicly addressed the market.<\/p>\n