Ahead of his meeting with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that it would be possible to extend the OPEC deal for oil for another one year.
Putin explained that the main aim of the deal was to reduce a global oil glut that had seen crude prices fall from more than USD 100 per barrel in 2014 to a 13-year low of under USD 30 in 2016.
Speaking at an energy forum in Moscow, the president said that the OPEC leaders should accept his proposal, as it would be important to cap the oil output. He recalled that 24 oil producing countries, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, had decided to reduce output by around 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2016.
Putin told the audience: “What we’ve done at OPEC serves the entire global economy well. We will look at the situation in late March. I think this is possible.” He once again urged OPEC leaders to extend the deal for second time, saying that if they agreed on a further extension, then it would be “at least until the end of 2018”.
The president made the request just before Saudi King Salman’s arrival in Russia. Before leaving for Moscow, King Salman told the local media in Riyadh that he would discuss the OPEC deal and various aspects of bilateral relations with President Putin during his first official visit to Russia. Later on Wednesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, too, arrived in Moscow.
The Saudi and Venezuelan leaders’ visit to Russia takes place just a month before the crucial meeting between OPEC and non-OPEC oil-producing countries that may decide to cut the crude output.

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Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das