Saudi Arabia Juggles Iran and U.S. Shale to Deliver OPEC Deal - Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia Juggles Iran and U.S. Shale to Deliver OPEC Deal - Bloomberg:

Saudi Arabia’s energy minister emerged from days of heated OPEC talks joking that he wasn’t an easy man to be friends with.

Yet, the deal Khalid Al-Falih hammered out to reduce production by 1.2 million barrels a day, which sent oil prices soaring on Friday, was based on Saudi Arabia shouldering the lion’s share of the cuts. It also relied, to an unprecedented extent, on Russia to broker an agreement between the Saudis and their archrivals, Iran, and acknowledged implicitly that there’s little the kingdom could do to hurt surging U.S. oil shale without causing itself pain.

“Saudi economic self-interest trumps Trump,’’ said Mike Rothman, president of Cornerstone Analytics Ltd., a veteran of three decades of OPEC meetings.