US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had asked Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud to raise oil output by up to two million barrels a day, but a Saudi official noted that Riyadh does not like raising its oil production not at least beyond 11 million barrels per day (bpd).
The Saudi official made the comment to The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
"Saudi Arabia does not really like going beyond 11 million barrels a day and has no intention of expanding its current production capacity. It is expensive," the Saudi official told The Wall Street Journal.
Oil prices rose last week, partly due to US plans to reimpose sanctions on Iran, a major oil producer.
The OPEC oil producers' group agreed to increase output, but this failed to reassure markets.
Saudi Arabia currently produces about 10 million barrels of oil per day.
However, investors are betting that Saudi regime has little room to respond to a future crisis should it boost output even more to meet Trump's request, as Saudi Arabia only has about 2 million barrels of unused capacity,” according to International Energy Agency.
The US state department has claimed that it expects the “vast majority” of world nations will comply with Washington’s demand to boycott Iran’s oil.
Meanwhile, Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei slammed all-out US economic and political measures against Tehran in a Saturday address, describing them as futile efforts to turn Iranians against the Islamic Republic.
