Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump stresses that targeting Russia’s oil revenues is the best way to get Moscow to end its nearly three-year war with Ukraine.
Trump, who promised in the campaign that he would bring a quick end to the grinding conflict, in his first days in office relied on the idea that OPEC+the alliance of oil-producing countries, holds the key to ending the war by reducing oil prices.
On Friday, the president renewed his call on the group of oil-producing exporters, led by Saudi Arabia, to reduce the price of oil. It’s a move he says would bleed Russia of much-needed revenue to pay for the conflict and force Vladimir Putin to reconsider the war.
“One way to stop it quickly is for OPEC to stop making so much money,” Trump told reporters. “So OPEC should get on the ball and lower the price of oil. And this war will end immediately.
But the push on OPEC+ is an uphill battle, according to industry experts. The Alliance last month Return the increase in oil production as it faces weaker than expected demand and competing production from non-allied countries.
Trump made similar calls on OPEC+ this week during a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, The annual gathering of world leaders and business elites.
Meanwhile, the president’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, said Friday that OPEC+ reducing oil prices to $45 per barrel could push Russia to end the war.
“Russia makes billions of dollars of money from oil sales,” Kellogg said in a Fox News interview. “What if you dropped that to $45 a barrel, which is basically a baseline starting point?”
The Saudi and Russian relationship is complicated, although the countries have cooperated on oil.
In 2016, Russia and other oil producers that were not part of the alliance joined with Saudi Arabia and other members of the oil cartel to form OPEC+. Russia and Saudi Arabia are by far the largest producers in the broader alliance. This move was largely made in response to the sharp decline in oil prices due to US shale oil production. The United States is not a member of OPEC or OPEC+.
Patrick de Haan, head of oil analysis at Gasbuddy, said Trump had a better relationship with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman than his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden. Still, he said, the Saudis “still have bills to pay” and Trump is making a “huge demand.”
“Oil companies are responding to the economy, not personal favors,” he added.
The Kremlin Friday rejected the idea That Russia could be pressed into talks by ending the war with the United States and its allies targeting the oil sector.
“The conflict does not depend on oil prices,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a call with reporters. “The conflict is ongoing because of the threat to Russia’s national security, the threat to Russians living in these territories, and the refusal of Americans and Europeans to listen to Russia’s security concerns. It is not linked to oil prices. »
The United States and its allies imposed a $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil. But Moscow has been able to maintain a steady stream of sales revenue by relying on buyers, notably China and India, who have taken advantage of Russians’ lower prices.
Trump earlier this week spoke by phone with the Saudi crown prince, his first call as a foreign leader after returning to the White House. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say whether the two leaders discussed Trump’s push to cut oil prices.
After the call, the crown prince said the kingdom would seek to invest 600 billion dollars In the United States, over the next four years, and Trump has publicly stated that he would like to see the Saudis spend $1 trillion. Trump also has hopes of clinching a long-standing Israeli-Saudi normalization deal to formalize relations between the Middle East’s two biggest powers.
Trump may be making a risky gambit by publicly supporting the Saudis and other OPEC+ nations.
Biden, who criticized the Saudis’ human rights record early in his term, faced a Embarrassing reverse months after the Ukraine war when the Saudis rejected The Democrat’s public push to increase overall oil flow.
Asked why Trump might succeed where Biden failed, Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, offered confidence but no details. “The Biden administration said a lot of things that never really came to fruition, and President Trump is a man of his word,” she said. “You see that already.
It is possible that Saudi Arabia and other allies will eventually want to answer Washington’s call, but not immediately, said Kevin Book, the managing director who leads the research team at Clearview Energy Partners LLC, a company of Washington Research.
Global oil supply is currently ahead of demand by about 700,000 barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency, a surplus that is already weighing on the price. Brent Crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, was trading at around $78 Friday morning. Book said whether Trump will have a better chance than Biden depends on his terms — what he demands and how much pressure he exerts.
“What Biden was essentially asking for was to divide the two biggest players in OPEC+ and that’s essentially what’s on the table right now,” he said. “It was difficult then. It would be difficult now.
Kellogg said Trump firmly believes that reducing economic pressure will be more helpful in bringing Russia to the negotiating table than helping Ukraine score battlefield victories.
Both sides suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. Kellogg expressed doubt that the incredible human cost would have much impact on the Kremlin’s calculations.
“This is a nation that was prepared to lose 700,000 killed in six months at Stalingrad during World War II. They’re throwing troops in there,” Kellogg said. He added: “So when you look at Putin, you can’t just say, ‘Well, stop the killing,’ because that’s not their mentality, that’s not how they do things.”
Criticism of Biden’s handling of the Ukraine conflict was a cornerstone of Trump’s 2024 campaign. He regularly pillaged Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for the enormous military aid poured into Ukraine following the invasion of Russia in February 2022.
He boasted on the campaign trail that the war would never have happened if he were president and that he would end the war within 24 hours of enslaving him.
Since his election victory, he has acknowledged that the war remains complicated and said it could take months to find a resolution to the war.
In a post on his social site Truth, Trump earlier this week said the United States “must never forget that Russia helped us win World War II.” And he has repeatedly said he will hold talks with Putin.
“I would really like to be able to meet with President Putin soon and get this war … over,” Trump said in Davos. “And it’s not from an economics perspective or anything else. This is from the perspective of millions of lives being wasted. Beautiful young people are slaughtered on the battlefield. »
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McDermott reported from Providence, Rhode Island. AP writer Will WEISert traveling aboard Air Force One contributed to the reports.
