Esta é a realidade do foro ao qual Lula acaba de associar o Brasil:
“ Judging by the statements of Saudi officials prior to Vladimir Putin's visit to the Arabian Peninsula, Arab oil-producing countries are dissatisfied and even annoyed with Russia's attitude as a member of the OPEC+ alliance - the Moscow Times.
Preparing to meet the Russian leader, the OPEC secretariat held a meeting on December 4 where representatives of the Russian Ministry of Energy, employees of five international organizations that analyze the state of the oil market, as well as five agencies that monitor tanker traffic were present.
The observers' main complaint was the lack of transparency of information on the Russian side, especially regarding data on oil exports.
"We wanted to convince our friends in Russia to share data on crude oil and oil product exports," the Saudi minister told the attendees.
According to Prince Abdulaziz, the Russian representatives agreed to provide answers to many of the questions raised and to participate in other such meetings regularly on the fifth of each month.
Oil and gas analysts from the Persian Gulf are reportedly extremely mistrustful of the promises of Russian officials, who have not previously been seen as particularly keen on providing reliable information to their partners. They recall in conversations that the Saudi minister has repeatedly complained about the lack of data transparency from Russia.
Russia's OPEC+ partners have no idea how much oil Russia actually produces, even though manipulating the number of barrels is the cartel's main tool in its efforts to stabilize the oil market. Instead, assurances are coming from Moscow that for the sake of solidarity with its alliance partners, Russia is indeed reducing.... not production, but exports.
In 1998, for example, Russia vowed to OPEC to cut its production by 7% but left it at the same level. The following year, a new promise was made, this time to cut by 100 thousand barrels per day, however, at the end of the year the average daily production of Russian oil did not fall, but increased from 6.17 to 6.18 million barrels. In early 2002, Moscow announced that it was cutting production by 150 thousand barrels per day under an agreement with OPEC - and by the third quarter, it had already become clear that Russian oil producers were ahead of all their plans to increase production.
In the fall of 2016, Russia, which by that time had reached its peak production of 11.23 million barrels per day, promised the cartel to cut this volume by 300 thousand barrels, but there was no change in volumes in 2016 and 2017.
All the promises turned out to be just promises.
Russia formally acts as the Saudis' main ally in OPEC+ and declares voluntary measures to reduce oil supplies to the world market, but as Prince Abdulaziz's remarks show, there is still a long way to go before a true sincere, and honest partnership.
Putin's "Arabian tour" is meant to show the world and the Russian population that somewhere on the globe there are still countries that are willing to receive him as a guest and not as a war criminal.
Mikhail Krutikhin, Russian economic analyst, and oil and gas market specialist, in the Moscow Times.”
From Anton Geraschenko
