U.S. President Donald Trump outlined Wednesday that his view on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has changed.
“For many years I used to think OPEC was very unfair. I hated OPEC, you want to know the truth, I hated it, because it was a fix,” Trump told reporters at a press briefing on Wednesday.
“But somewhere along the line that broke down and it went the opposite way. And we have a tremendously powerful energy industry in this country now, number one in the world, and I don’t want those jobs being lost,” he added.
In the press briefing, Trump was asked if the U.S. would consider a national coordinated cut in production. He responded by saying the country had “already cut” output.
“I don’t think, look, we’ve already cut. You know, we’re like, very market oriented,” Trump stated.
“If you look at Texas and if you look at North Dakota and if you look at some of our states that do this very well, they’ve already cut way back. You know, they cut back automatically,” he added.
Trump reiterated in the briefing that he thought Saudi Arabia and Russia would “straighten out” their oil dispute.
“A lot of progress has been made over the last week and it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of OPEC [Thursday],” Trump stated.
OPEC is currently set to host a web meeting later today to discuss production cuts. When asked what he would do if OPEC doesn’t end up cutting output today, Trump responded by saying “we’ll see”.
“I have a lot of options. Got a lot of good options … beauties. I might like it even more,” he added.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasted that U.S. crude oil production will drop by 0.5 million barrels per day this year and 0.7 million barrels per day next year. These projections assume there will be no OPEC deal during the forecast period, however.
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