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White House official issued a searing response Thursday to Saudi Arabia after its Foreign Ministry claimed it decided to reduce oil production in a “purely economic context” outside of its relationship with Russia.
“The Saudi Foreign Ministry can try to spin or deflect, but the facts are simple,” John Kirby, the White House coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said.
Kirby repeated that the U.S. is “re-evaluating” its relationship with Saudi Arabia after the OPEC country’s decision to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, despite reported pleas from the U.S. to delay the reduction for at least one month.
He also claimed that “OPEC nations communicated to us privately that they also disagreed with the Saudi decision, but felt coerced to support Saudi’s direction,” and that the U.S. “presented Saudi Arabia with analysis to show that there was no market basis to cut production targets.”
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Thursday denying the U.S. allegations that it reduced oil production for political reasons, or that it pressured any OPEC countries to follow suit, saying “this decision was taken unanimously by all member states of the OPEC+ group.”
