Trump to OPEC: ‘Reduce pricing now!’

WASHINGTON (Reuters): US President Donald Trump again accused the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries of driving gas prices higher on Twitter on Wednesday and urged the oil cartel’s members to do more.

“The OPEC Monopoly must remember that gas prices are up & they are doing little to help. If anything, they are driving prices higher as the United States defends many of their members for very little $’s. This must be a two way street. REDUCE PRICING NOW!” Trump wrote on Twitter.

The Republican president has lashed out at the petroleum group in recent weeks. Rising gasoline prices could create a political headache for Trump before the November mid-term congressional elections by offsetting Republican claims that his tax cuts and rollbacks of federal regulations have helped boost the US economy.

In a tweet on Saturday, Trump said Saudi Arabia had agreed to increase oil output by up to two million barrels per day, an assertion that the White House rowed back on in a subsequent statement.

The leader of Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s biggest member, has assured Trump that the kingdom can raise oil production if needed and that the country has two million barrels per day of spare capacity that could be deployed to help cool oil prices to compensate for falling output in Venezuela and Iran.

Trump has been complaining about OPEC at the same time that Washington is piling pressure on its European allies to stop buying Iranian oil.