MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The United States agreed on Thursday to make 250,000 barrels per day in additional cuts to oil output to help Mexico contribute to global reductions, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday.
During marathon talks on Thursday inside the OPEC+ group, oil producers agreed to make cuts equivalent to around 10% of global supplies, but Mexico balked at the initiative.
Speaking at a regular news conference, Lopez Obrador said Mexico had been pressed to make cuts of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd), before the group lowered the target to 350,000 bpd.
Lopez Obrador, who has made increasing oil output one of the priorities of his administration, said U.S. President Donald Trump had spoken to him on Thursday and offered to help before Mexico announced it would cut output by 100,000 barrels per day.
“President Trump said the United States committed to reducing by 250,000 (barrels), on top of what it was going to do, for Mexico, in order to compensate,” he said.
The Mexican president’s announcement of U.S. cuts came as a surprise. Reuters reported on April 2 that a senior Trump administration official said that Trump did not plan to ask U.S. oil producers for coordinated oil production cuts.
Mexico resisted making deeper cuts because the country has gone to great lengths to reverse years of declining output at state oil firm Petroleos Mexicanos, Lopez Obrador said.
During their call last night, Trump marveled out how Mexico was the only holdout to the deal, Lopez Obrador said.
“When I told him that it was 100,000 (barrels) and we couldn’t do any more, he very generously said to me that they were going to help us with the additional 250,000 to what they are going to contribute,” he said. “So for that I thank him.”
(Reporting by Mexico City Newsroom)
