U.S. President Trump is wrong to expect that Saudi Arabia and other large producers can compensate for the decline in Iranian crude oil supply resulting from the renewed U.S. sanctions against Tehran, Iran’s OPEC governor told Reuters. “It seems President Trump has been taken hostage by Saudi Arabia and a few producers when they claimed they can replace 2.5 million barrels per day of Iranian exports, encouraging him to take action against Iran,” Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said a day after a Reuters poll suggested that OPEC’s total production this month had only risen by a modest 70,000 bpd. Last month President Trump called on OPEC to boost production because of the inexorable price rise prompted by the Iran sanctions and the steady decline in Venezuela’s oil production along with supply uncertainty regarding Libya. Trump was not alone in this call: India is also unhappy with higher prices and has […]