Iraq News Now

Saudi Arabia is ready to start pumping more oil if the United

States indeed ends the sanction waivers they granted eight Iranian oil

importers last November, Reuters reports, citing

a source that remained unnamed.
However, the source added that

Riyadh will not rush into a reversal of the cuts. It will first examine the

effect of the sanction waiver cancelation before it decides how to respond to

it.
Saudi

Arabia will not be alone in this, it seems. Soon after Reuters released its

report on Riyadh’s plans, it followed up with a quote from a spokesman for Iraq’s oil ministry. The official said

no single OPEC member should be allowed to make a unilateral decision on

production changes while the OPEC+ deal is still in effect.
Asked whether OPEC’s

second-largest producer was ready to start pumping more oil, the spokesman said

“Iraq does not take a unilateral decision to compensate for a reduction in the

oil market for any reason.”
Oil prices hit the highest since

the start of the year on news that Washington will today announce a cancelation

of the Iran sanction waivers that it granted to India, China, Japan, South

Korea and a few smaller importers of Iranian crude oil. At the time of writing,

Brent traded close to US$74 a barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at US$65.59

a barrel.
If the

U.S. does cancel the waivers, Brent at US$75 and higher will no longer look

like a distant and unlikely possibility. This means that OPEC+ will likely end

its production cuts in June as originally planned and as Russia has hinted it

would like to see happen.
This may mitigate rising oil

prices, but it will sour relations between the U.S. on the one hand, and India

and China on the other. The two Asian powerhouses are the largest importers of

Iranian crude and both would be quite unwilling to pay a lot more for the oil

they import.
China

was quick to respond: a foreign ministry official said earlier today that Beijing has consistently opposed the

unilateral U.S. sanctions against Tehran.
India

followed: an unnamed source told Reuters

New Delhi was hoping to secure permission from Washington to continue importing

Iranian crude.