With the production gains, OPEC+ compliance with its quotas slipped to 111% in March, compared with 113.5% in February, juiced by Saudi Arabia voluntarily cutting an additional 1 million b/d since January.

The Kingdom wants to increase the generation capacity of renewable energy sources to about 58.7 gigawatts by 2030, of which 40 gigawatts (GW) would be from solar and 16GW from wind energy and the balance coming from other renewable energy sources,

Saudi Arabia exported 6.582 million b/d in January, according to JODI data released March 18, an increase of 87,000 b/d from December. It was the seventh straight month that shipments have risen since a historic low of 4.98 million b/d in June when stringent OPEC+ production cuts were in effect.

With non-OPEC supply forecast to bounce back by 950,000 b/d in 2021 to 63.8 million b/d, OPEC lowered the estimated demand for its crude by 240,000 b/d to 27.26 million b/d.

"I would like to assure that we and Russia would like a oil price which is fair to consumers and to producers," Saudi foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said at a press briefing with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh.

Combined, the so-called OPEC+ alliance produced 37.83 million b/d, its lowest since October, the survey found, putting the group's compliance with its quotas at 113.5%.

"The surprise cut that they have done recently is a really brilliant move that led to stabilization of the market joined by other OPEC members at the most critical time," Dmitriev, who has been leading Russia's diplomacy in Saudi Arabia alongside Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, said at the Saudi Future Investment Initiative conference.

The OPEC+ alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, decided in December after days of heated negotiations to ease their stringent quotas by a collective 500,000 b/d for January, instead of the originally scheduled 2 million b/d tapering.

Saudi Arabia will hold its February and March crude production to 8.125 million b/d -- well below its quota of 9.119 million b/d

State-run oil giant Saudi Aramco is working to determine the exact size and resource volume of the new finds,