Donald Trump's senior official said he had a "productive discussion" with his Saudi counterpart about oil market volatility this weekend.
US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, agreed to continue talks through a meeting of G20 energy ministers that will be held "in the near future." Dan Brouillette said he reiterated in the discussion that a dispute between Saudi Arabia and Russia had major implications for the United States and the world, according to a transcript released by the Energy Department.
In an interview to Fox Business, Brouillette said that the energy ministerial meeting of G20 members could take place later this week.
The meeting of OPEC +, which has once been postponed, is now rescheduled for Thursday. Russia and Saudi Arabia expect the United States to join the deal, but Trump has not yet shown much willingness to do so.
Brouillette repeated that he's going to look for further storage opportunities for drillers that are fast running out of space to store their excess barrels. Last week, he made 30 million barrels of storage capacity available from the nation's emergency oil reserve. "Oil prices being what they are, It's a great time to fill this petroleum reserve," he said.
According to the Minister of Energy, all opportunities are open to help this industry. "The president made that very clear. For those that would take a predatory advantage of the U.S. market, the president will react accordingly," he said.
Trump has threatened substantial oil tariffs if prices remain close to their lowest levels in nearly two decades. However, he has also made it clear that he expects the former allies to agree production cuts.
President Donald Trump hopes that he will not have to impose tariffs on imported oil to mitigate the impact of a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, but he has given up the opportunity to protect US oil producers.
"We want to save a great industry," Trump said about the US oil industry. "If they don't get along, I would do that, yes, I would do tariffs, very substantial tariffs."
"I would use tariffs if I had to," he said at a White House press conference on Sunday, confirming his position after the briefing on Saturday.
The US has been negotiating with Russia and Saudi Arabia to reduce excess production. The negotiations included phone calls between Trump and the leaders of both countries. But despite Trump's claim last week that the two countries will cut production by 10-15 million barrels, no agreement has been reached yet.
The International Energy Agency said that even the deepest oil production cuts could not stabilize oil markets as demand has fallen sharply due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Trump said that it was the coronavirus outbreak that had heavily hit the industry. He also noted that low oil prices are beneficial for the US economy, the largest consumer of oil. "A lot of people are happy. I see very inexpensive jet fuel, we're trying to save the airline industry," Trump said.
