OPEC, Trump, Saudi, Russia News : President to Meet Oil CEOs - Bloomberg
▻https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-03/trump-to-get-earful-on-tariffs-in-meeting-with-oil-industry
On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump sent oil prices rallying on the prospect of an unprecedented, U.S.-backed deal to cut global crude production.
On Friday, he walked out of a meeting with the titans of America’s oil industry without any public declaration of a plan to curtail domestic output, saying it’s a free market and up to Saudi Arabia and Russia to solve their price war that sent crude crashing.
His remarks call into question Trump’s ability to broker a truce between the world’s two biggest crude exporters at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is destroying demand and threatening the shale industry’s survival. The president said that tariffs on oil imports could be imposed, though he’s not planning to do that at the moment.
While both Saudi Arabia and Russia have expressed openness to coordinated production cuts — and Trump said a deal between the two nations will come soon — it’s unclear that can be achieved without the U.S. and other nations also taking part. On Saturday, renewed diplomatic tension between Riyadh and Moscow further blurred the outlook for a deal. Asked whether America would join in, Trump was evasive.
“#It’s_a_free_market. We’ll figure it out,” he told reporters in Washington after the gathering with the heads of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and other major producers. “Ultimately the marketplace will take care of it.”
