Who's your swing producer now?
Under pressure from Trump, Saudi Arabia has demolished the Opec deal and will now pour oil into a market that is suddenly running short
Late in the evening of 21 June, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, Iran's oil minister, walked out of Opec's headquarters on Helferstorferstraße and rushed to the nearby Kempinski hotel. He unloaded on the waiting press pack, briefing Iranian journalists off the record. Iran would accept no deal to increase oil output at the next day's Opec meeting, he said. Doing so was tantamount to "suicide", he told the Iranian reporters. The Opec meeting seemed destined for an ugly confrontation, the climax of a week of high-stakes petro-diplomacy. While Zangeneh huffed, a crucial meeting carried on without him back in Opec's headquarters. The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee (JMMC), led by Saudi Arabia and R
Also in this section
1 April 2026
Golden Pass’s startup offers QatarEnergy a timely boost but may also force a difficult choice between honouring disrupted contracts and capitalising on soaring spot LNG prices
1 April 2026
It is not a case of if or when, but the length and magnitude of economic damage from elevated oil prices
1 April 2026
The US-Iran conflict demonstrates the need for diversification in several senses of the word. It also exposes the limits of Washington applying pressure on major oil and gas producers it considers geopolitical adversaries
31 March 2026
Disappointing results in its bidding round are a reality check for Libya, and global exploration generally
