No one has launched any talks about a potential new oil-production deal to replace the OPEC+ format, Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said that former friends-turned-foes Saudi Arabia and Russia are talking and “I think they’ll to come up with something.”

“No one has started talking about any specific or abstract deals yet,” the Kremlin spokesman Peskov told reporters on Thursday, as carried by Russian news agency TASS.

Peskov reminded reporters that Putin and Trump discussed the situation on the oil market earlier this week, and noted that “no one is happy” with the current oil price.

The current prices of Brent Crude in the mid-$20s are well below Saudi Arabia’s fiscal break-even price of $80 a barrel oil, below the break-evens of nearly all U.S. shale production, and below the Russian breakeven price, too.

Russia and Saudi Arabia have not started talks regarding the oil market, Peskov said today. Nor there are plans for such talks at the highest level either for Thursday or Friday, Peskov added.

On Wednesday, President Trump told a press conference: “I think that Saudi Arabia and Russia are negotiating, they are talking, and I think they’ll come up with something.”

“I think I know what to do to solve it, but if they are unable to solve it, I know what to do to solve it,” President Trump said. Related: Coronavirus Could Lead To Mass Layoffs In Oil And Gas

“I think that Russia and Saudi Arabia may be at some point are going to make a deal in the not too distant future because it’s very bad for Russia, it’s very bad for Saudi Arabia,” he added.

While waiting for Russia and the Saudis to talk about the oil market, President Trump will meet later this week with U.S. oil executives to discuss possible financial assistance for the industry and tariffs on oil imports from Saudi Arabia, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Hopes of a Saudi-Russian truce in the oil price war and a Bloomberg report that China is preparing to snap up crude oil to fill its strategic reserves at ultra-cheap prices sent oil prices surging by more than 10 percent at 9:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, with WTI Crude jumping 10.14 percent at $22.37.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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