"It became evident that U.S. shale oil output has become and will remain a new global oil price regulator for the foreseeable future," Rosneft said.

Compliance of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) with an oil output cut exceeded a target, standing at 140% in February.

Rising oil production in the US, which Russia's energy ministry forecasts to grow by 400,000 b/d year on year in 2017, is being monitored, but it should not be considered separate from the global supply and demand balance, he said.

Crude oil flows from the Kirkuk fields in northern Iraq were briefly disrupted on Thursday after a Kurdish faction seized a pumping facility in protest at the policies of Baghdad and Erbil, adding a new threat to Iraq’s attempts to comply with Opec’s agreed cuts.

Oil supplies fell by around 1.5 million barrels per day last month, including by 1 million bpd for OPEC, leading to record initial compliance of 90 percent with a six-month output-cut deal reached in December by big producers to boost prices.

"Over the course of the past year, Iran and Venezuela had very close stances and we were supportive of each other in many instances," said the Iranian official.

Therefore, OPEC has raised its supply to Asia, and Russia has also re-routed a great chunk of its rising production toward China and the Asia-Pacific over the past decade. Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as China's biggest supplier last year, exporting 1.05 million bpd of crude versus Saudi Arabia's 1.02 million.

OPEC’s biggest crude producer is embarking on a domestic renewable-energy program costing $30 billion to $50 billion. The country’s only solar plant in operation, aside from a limited pilot project, is a 10-megawatt facility on top of a parking lot at Saudi Aramco’s headquarters. The national utility, Saudi Electricity Co., is seeking bids for two solar plants to generate a combined 100 megawatts.

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said OPEC’s 13 nations and 11 producers outside the cartel had made collective cuts totaling 1.5 million barrels a day since agreements were struck in late November and early December. Oil prices have risen nearly 20% since those deals were made, despite widespread skepticism over whether OPEC and other producers would follow through.

Brent for March settlement rose 27 cents to $55.72 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The contract fell 56 cents, or 1 percent, to $55.45 a barrel on Friday. Prices slid 2.9 percent last week, the biggest drop since November. The global benchmark crude traded at a premium of $2.32 to March WTI.