The Saudis and OPEC are in talks to partially walk back their recent production cut ahead of an upcoming European Union/G7 price cap on Russian exports, the Wall Street Journal reports. On the table at the cartel’s planned December 4th meeting is a 500,000 barrel a day production increase, a reversal of their October cut of 2 million barrels a day – which was effectively actually about 880,000 per day given that several members had already been pumping below quotas.
The Journal characterizes the reversal as one that “could help heal a rift with the Biden administration” which tapped into the national Strategic Petroleum Reserve earlier in this fall to ease gas prices ahead of the midterm elections, defanging Republicans’ bitching on the issue.