The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, supplier of about 40 percent of the world's oil, and Russia, the largest producer, should cooperate to support crude prices, Kuwait's oil minister said. Kuwait hopes that “cooperation between Russia and OPEC will be better than in the past,” Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah said in Moscow on Tuesday. Sergei Shmatko, his Russian counterpart, also said he hopes talks can be held with OPEC after previous initiatives “didn't find a positive reaction.” Relations between Russia and the 12-member OPEC soured last year as Russia raised output after OPEC made record supply cuts to support prices amid the first global recession since World War II. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told OPEC in December 2008, when the group committed to cuts, that Russia was ready to limit output after prices collapsed by more than three-quarters from a record $147.27 a barrel in July that year. Russia's crude exports rose 11 percent last year to 5.61 million barrels a day, data from OPEC's Annual Statistical Bulletin showed, while OPEC nations made efforts to remove 4.2 million barrels a day from the market as demand fell. Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil supplier and de facto leader of OPEC, reduced its exports by 14 percent to 6.27 million barrels a day. OPEC didn't invite Russia to attend its September 2009 meeting in Vienna, breaking with tradition. Russia is usually invited as an observer.
