Putin has no plan to contact Saudi over oil

moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin has no immediate plans for contact with Saudi Arabia over falling oil prices, a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday.

Dmitry Peskov also said that this month’s agreement between the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other leading oil producers to cut oil output in order to support oil prices may have “a lagging impact” on the market.

Oil prices have reached their lowest since the third quarter of 2017 as global oversupply has kept buyers away from the market ahead of holidays over the next two weeks.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday that oil prices, which fell by more than a third this quarter, would be more stable in the first half of 2019. He said in an interview that there were no proposals for an extraordinary meeting with Opec, explaining the fall in oil prices by fundamental and macroeconomic factors.

Meanwhile, Kuwait’s newly appointed oil minister Khaled Al Fadhel said his country supports all efforts aimed at stabilising oil markets, the state news agency Kuna reported on Tuesday.

Fadhel said Kuwait is committed to the recent Opec, nonOpec agreements made earlier this month, which include a production cut of around 1.2 million barrels per day for six months starting from January.