After months of meetings from Doha to Moscow, it was a 2 a.m. phone call between two of the most powerful men in the global oil industry that finally broke the impasse. On the eve of the Nov. 30 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the odds of finishing a deal to reduce supply and ease a global oil glut didn’t look good. Members remained deadlocked over how much each should reduce. They had been forced to cancel talks aimed at getting other suppliers like Russia and Brazil to play a part. Alexander Novak and Khalid Al-Falih But in the small hours of the morning of Nov. 29 Riyadh and Moscow time, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih and Russian counterpart Alexander Novak had talked. Novak promised that Russia was willing not simply to freeze its output, as it had long insisted, but to cut, contributing half […]