White House Confirms Energy Talks With Saudi

The US sent two senior officials to Saudi Arabia this week to discuss energy security the White House has confirmed.

• "I will confirm that Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in the region to follow up on conversations on a range of issues including Iran’s destabilizing activities, ensuring stable global energy supplies and other regional issues," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said yesterday.
• Jean-Pierre has insisted that the US were not asking Saudi to increase production or exports - "Asking for oil is simply wrong. That’s the way that we see it and a misunderstanding of both the complexity of that issue as well as our multi-faceted discussions with the Saudis,"
• There have been international calls on Saudi Arabia to increase production capacity to help alleviate high crude prices but so far, they have resisted. Saudi officials have said the global markets are suffering from a tight refined product market rather than a tight crude market.
• Saudi Arabia is one of the only OPEC members with suitable spare production capacity to meaningfully increase supply. Many producers in the group have struggled to even meet current production targets.