Author: MD Editors

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman defended the voluntary output cuts announced by some allied oil producers in April, which he noted were first criticized as likely to spike crude prices — then, as failing to support them. On April 3, several producers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners — collectively known as OPEC+ — revealed a combined 1.66 million barrels per day of production declines until the end of this year. This Sunday, they extended these measures through the end of 2024, with Riyadh announcing an additional 1 million-per-day voluntary and extensible drop,…

The influential Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies, known as OPEC+, on Sunday made no changes to its planned oil production cuts for this year, as coalition chair Saudi Arabia announced further voluntary declines. OPEC+ also announced in a statement that it will limit combined oil production to 40.463 million barrels per day over January-December 2024. Previously, the alliance agreed to a 2 million barrels-per-day decline in October. Some OPEC+ members also announced some voluntary drops of just over 1.6 million barrels per day in April. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said Sunday that all…

Oil prices rose following OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia’s decision to cut production by another million barrels per day. On Sunday, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners (known as OPEC+) made no changes to its planned oil production cuts for the rest of the year. However, the world’s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia announced further voluntary output cuts which will be implemented from July. The kingdom’s output will decline to 9 million barrels per day from around 10 million barrels in May, Saudi’s energy ministry said in a statement. Both benchmarks were trading higher on Monday, although…

The cost of passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles is set to increase by more than 8% The Turkish government has raised the fee for ships passing through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, the newspaper Aydinlik reports, citing a ruling by the General Directorate of Maritime Affairs of the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure. The key waterways are the only way to move cargoes between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. The fee increase of 8.3% comes into effect on July 1, and is projected to bring Ankara’s annual revenue from the straits to $900 million. Commercial ships will now…

AvtoVAZ says the St. Petersburg factory will become operational in June Car production at a St. Petersburg plant that formerly belonged to Nissan will resume this month, the CEO of Russia’s biggest automaker AvtoVAZ has announced. The Japanese manufacturer left the Russian market last year, transferring all its assets in the country to the state-owned research and development firm NAMI for a token sum of €1. The plant in Russia’s second-largest city was later bought by AvtoVAZ, which is best known for its Lada vehicles. “June 14, 2023 is the date when production at the Lada St. Petersburg plant will…

Meanwhile, imports from Saudi Arabia have reportedly dropped to their lowest level since 2021 India imported nearly 2 million barrels of crude oil per day from Russia in May, notching a new record, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing ship-tracking data. Flows of Russian oil to New Delhi surged by 15% last month compared to April, reaching 1.96 million barrels per day (bpd) and putting a dent in the share of imports from OPEC’s major oil producer, Saudi Arabia, data from Vortexa showed. Saudi crude exports to India have plunged to their lowest levels since 2021, according to Bloomberg. Analysts have…

Trade between BRICS and Iran has been growing as Iran seeks to become a member of the alliance, according to the country’s foreign minister. Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was speaking at the ‘Friends’ of BRICS session as part of the bloc’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, on Friday. “Our bilateral political and economic relations with the BRICS countries remain at a very good level while our trade value exceeds $30 billion,” Amir-Abdollahian said, noting that the sides have important arrangements on multilateral cooperation. “We will soon expand our relations with three BRICS countries; namely Russia, China, and India within…

OPEC + announced that it had reached an agreement to set a new level of oil production at 40.46 million barrels per day, starting from the beginning of 2024. And a statement on the group said: “OPEC +” group took a decision to adjust the volume of oil production, with the aim of maintaining the stability of the oil market, and establishing conditions that allow predicting its movement in the long term.  And the statement continued: “Russia must control the volume of oil production at the level of 9.828 million barrels per day, as of 2024.” This article was originally…

Aydinlik newspaper quoted the Directorate of Maritime Affairs of the Turkish Ministry of Transport as saying that the Turkish authorities intend, as of July 1, to raise the fees for ships passing through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by more than eight percent. In October last year, the Turkish authorities raised the fees for the passage of merchant ships through the Black Sea straits by 5 times. The amount is calculated on the basis of the gold franc approved since the signing in 1936 of the Montreux Convention, which regulates navigation in the straits. The newspaper added: “The Maritime Affairs Directorate…

Data from the Russian Ministry of Finance showed that the reserves of the Russian National Welfare Fund amounted to about 12.353 trillion rubles (approximately $154.4 billion) on June 1, 2023. According to the data of the Russian Ministry, the reserves accounted for 8.2% of the expected GDP for Russia for the year 2023. At the beginning of this month, the volume of liquid assets of the Russian Sovereign Fund amounted to 6.64 trillion rubles (about 82 billion dollars), which constitutes approximately 4.4% of the expected GDP. Moscow established the fund more than 10 years ago and accumulated part of the…