The decision by Moscow to withdraw from OPEC-plus beginning April 1 caused shock and panic among market analysts. This structure emerged as a result of joint Russian-Saudi efforts that, in 2016, led to the Vienna Agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries, a deal aimed to decrease oil production in order to prevent the fall of oil prices and ensure their stability. The initial six-month OPEC-plus deal was then extended several times. It also led to the formation of a permanent forum-like structure with its own charter signed in July, which allows participants to coordinate and adjust their production policies.

This Russia-backed format proved to be effective and achieved, at least temporarily, relatively high and stable oil prices. In December, the deal was extended until April. Consequently, until the very last moment, the Kremlin’s withdrawal from the deal seemed to be hardly possible, although Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak periodically told the international community that his country did not plan to stay the part of this structure forever.

The confidence of external observers that Russia would remain a loyal member of OPEC-plus was supported by the belief that Moscow’s withdrawal from the deal would inevitably backfire when it comes to Russian relations with another founding member of this structure, Saudi Arabia. Indeed, for the last several years, Russia has demonstrated deep interest in developing bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the oil and gas sector with the Gulf countries. It also seemed to perceive Riyadh as a key player in the Middle East, obviously hoping to establish active political dialogue with it. Yet the depth of this interest and its impact on Russia’s decision-making toward the oil market was obviously overestimated.

For the last three years, apart from the pompous exchange of the visits by the heads of the states, Russian-Saudi political dialogue did not produce much in terms of results. In the global hydrocarbon market, Russia and Gulf exporters are competitors at least as much as partners. Thus, within the last several years, Russia and Saudi Arabia periodically competed for oil markets in Asia and Europe. During 2018-19, in spite of domestic production cuts, both Moscow and Riyadh were increasing their supplies to Beijing, competing for the title of the largest oil exporter to China and the share of the Chinese market created by the fall in Iran’s oil shipments to Beijing as well as growing domestic demand and China's attempts to diversify its sources of hydrocarbon imports.