(Adds Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, details)
By Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) - The Trump administration on
Monday accused "state actors" of touching off an historic slump
in global oil prices, and urged Russia's ambassador to the
United States to consider the importance of calming the markets.
Oil prices suffered their biggest daily rout since the 1991
Gulf War on Monday as top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia
launched a price war in the face of weak demand prompted by the
spread of the coronavirus. "These attempts by state actors to manipulate and shock oil
markets reinforce the importance of the role of the United
States as a reliable energy supplier to partners and allies
around the world," U.S. Energy Department spokeswoman Shaylyn
Hynes said in a statement.
The department did not name any country, but said it was
watching the fallout from last week's meeting in which a
three-year pact between Russia and Saudi Arabia, the top
producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries, collapsed after Russia declined to follow OPEC's lead
in cutting output.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin "emphasized the
importance of orderly energy markets" in a previously scheduled
meeting on Monday with Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, the
Treasury said in a statement.
Mnuchin's pleas could face an obstacle after the Trump
administration last month slapped sanctions on a subsidiary of
Russian state oil major Rosneft that it says provides a lifeline
to Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro.
The United States and most other Western countries consider
Maduro's 2018 election a sham.
But Russia, which has boosted operations in Venezuela as the
country faces an economic crisis, believes it is unfair to
penalize Russian companies without also placing sanctions on
U.S. companies that have operations in the South American
country, including Chevron Corp CVX.N .
PRODUCERS
The market rout poses a threat to the bustling U.S. drilling
industry, an important segment of the U.S. economy that has made
the country into the world's largest producer of oil and gas and
reversed its historic role as a proponent of low energy prices.
The plunge could push many U.S. producers, some of whom have
already been hit by near-record low natural gas prices, into
bankruptcy.
The oil and gas industry downplayed the effect of the oil
price drop on U.S. producers, however.
Mike Sommers, the head of the American Petroleum Institute
industry group, said efficiency advances brought about during
the U.S. shale revolution are protecting American drillers from
gyrations in global oil markets.
"U.S. producers today are more efficient and more productive
than they have ever been and their investments are for the long
term," Sommers told reporters in a teleconference.
Sommers acknowledged that producers cannot be entirely
shielded from global market forces, however.
Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette on Monday directed his
department to determine whether a scheduled sale of 12 million
barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve should
take place this month, the DOE said.
The department had announced the sale on Feb. 28 in
compliance with a 2015 law that ordered occasional sales to help
pay for government programs. President Donald Trump, who is seeking reelection in
November, tried to put a silver lining on the oil price drop.
"Good for the consumer, gasoline prices coming down!" he
wrote.