Ahmad Ghaddar and Alex Lawler

LONDON (Reuters), Despite increasing sanctions and international outrage at Russia’s military aggression on Ukraine, Saudi Arabia Tuesday reiterated its commitment to an OPEC+ Agreement with Russia in oil markets.

    The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies led by Russia – a group known as OPEC+ – have been unwinding historic production cuts they instated in 2020 after the pandemic caused an unprecedented fall in global demand.

Former President Donald Trump intervened in order to urge Riyadh to stop a price war with Moscow and to work together for the stability of the oil market.

    Oil prices have rallied to their highest levels in over seven years this week on tight supply and disruptions to crude exports from Russia caused by wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow.

The International Energy Agency, (IEA), met Tuesday to discuss Ukraine’s crisis and agreed to free 60 million barrels oil from its strategic reserves.

The United States wishes that OPEC+ would increase its production more rapidly than it does since August.

    Only a few countries have spare capacity, including de facto OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbour the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Riyadh, so far, has resisted U.S. demands to raise output sooner than is required under the OPEC+ agreement.

OPEC+, at its February 2nd meeting, agreed to raise March’s output by 400,000 barrels/day (bpd). It still has 2.6 million bpd to undo by September.

Saudi Arabia’s Cabinet affirmed Tuesday its commitment to the OPEC+ deal, which requires monthly increases of 400,000 bpd.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan Tuesday to discuss the OPEC+ agreement and promised to maintain coordination in global energy markets.

Four OPEC+ Sources told Reuters that they expected to reach an agreement on an additional 400,000 bpd in April, despite the events in Ukraine.

    The sources said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which it calls a “special operation” – had had no impact to date on the functioning of the supply agreement.

U.S. close ally in Middle East, the UAE, abstained from voting on February 25, 2005, for a UN Security Council resolution that condemned Moscow’s conduct.

    A diplomatic adviser to the UAE president said that was to encourage a political solution and taking sides would only encourage violence.

    A technical committee meeting of the OPEC+ alliance met on Tuesday to assess the latest fundamentals.

    A report prepared for the committee and seen by Reuters showed OPEC+ had revised down its oil market surplus forecast for this year by about 200,000 bpd to 1.1 million bpd under its base scenario.

    The report did not assess the market impact of potential big disruptions to Russian oil supplies from sanctions.

While the United States has been a major ally to Saudi Arabia for many years, U.S. President Joe Biden broke relations by releasing an unclassified U.S. intelligence review about Jamal Khashoggi’s 2018 murder.