Top UAE diplomat says Gulf producer 'will be encouraging OPEC to consider higher' output

The UAE ambassador to the US has said the Gulf producer will put pressure on OPEC to increase oil production, according to a tweet March 9 from the country's embassy in the US.

"We favor production increases and will be encouraging OPEC to consider higher production levels," ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba said in a statement published on Twitter.

Otaiba is the UAE's top diplomat overseas, charged with maintaining its key relationship with the administration of President Joe Biden. The statement -- originally sent to the UK's FT newspaper -- comes a day after a high-level call between UAE foreign minister and senior royal Abdullah bin Zayed and his US counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The diplomat's unusual intervention on oil policy comes after crude prices surged to 14-year highs in recent days, with some countries imposing bans on Russian oil imports and many companies self-imposing restrictions on trading Russian barrels for fear of financial liability.

However, the OPEC+ producer alliance with the Kremlin refused in its last meeting March 2 to budge from its strategy of drip feeding 400,000 b/d of production back to the market.

The UAE along with Saudi Arabia are the group's only producers with significant enough volumes of spare capacity available to help ease prices and make up for gaps caused by new bans imposed on Russian oil imports in countries like the US and UK in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

According to the latest S&P Global Commodity Insights survey of OPEC output, the UAE produced 2.95 million b/d in February, just under its quota.