Oil Market Not High on Trump-Putin Agenda

Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin may discuss the state of the oil market at their summit on July 16, although there will be more important topics on the agenda, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“It can be said with confidence that this matter will hardly be the leading one in the agenda. Topics much more actual in terms of bilateral relations exist, which will be considered in the first instance,” TASS quoted Peskov as telling reporters on Thursday, commenting on the Trump-Putin summit slated to be held on July 16 in Helsinki, Finland.

Earlier this week, Peskov said on a conference call with reporters that Putin had said that he would be open to discuss everything except Crimea, which Moscow claims is an integral part of Russia.

“All the rest are matters subject to consensus, discussion, and a search for possible points of contact,” Peskov said.

The White House says that the two leaders will discuss relations between the United States and Russia and a range of national security issues, without giving more details.

Although there would probably be more pressing topics on the table up for discussion, the oil market situation may be one of the those issues that needs discussing, considering that Russia has been the key non-OPEC partner of OPEC leader Saudi Arabia in masterminding and implementing a production cut deal that depleted excess global oil inventories and propped up oil prices.

The Saudis and Russians were also allies that agreed two weeks ago to boost production and reverse some of the cuts to ‘stabilize’ the oil market and oil prices, after plunging Venezuelan production and pending US sanctions on Iranian spooked the oil market and sent oil prices to three-and-a-half-year highs.

Trump, for his part, has been calling for increased OPEC production to bring gasoline prices down.

Since April he has criticized OPEC for what he claims is manipulation of oil prices, calling the organization out for oil prices that are ‘too high’.

On the day of the OPEC meeting on June 22, Trump tweeted again: “Hope OPEC will increase output substantially. Need to keep prices down!”