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BAKU — Major oil producers led by Saudi Arabia agreed on Monday to keep working together to prop up crude prices, but said they would decide only in June on whether to extend production cuts.

Meeting in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku, members of the OPEC+ alliance said they would continue coordinating efforts to “stabilise” the oil market through production cutbacks.

But they postponed a planned April meeting and said a decision would be made in June on whether to extend production cuts into the second half of 2019, once the impact of US sanctions on Iran and Venezuela is more clear.

In a joint statement after the talks, members of the alliance stressed the need to “restore market stability and prevent the recurrence of any market imbalance” — shorthand for keeping prices from dropping too low.

The 24-nation alliance came together in 2016, when the Saudi-dominated Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia agreed on the need to limit production in the face of tumbling prices.

The OPEC+ alliance has endured, with regular meetings and agreements to extend production limits, helping oil prices rise from around $40 per barrel in 2016 to an average of $70 per barrel last year.

The meeting in Baku brought together the group’s monitoring committee to review the latest extension, which saw OPEC+ nations agree to cut production by 1.2 million barrels per day from January to June.

The committee was due to meet again next month, but on Monday that meeting was postponed until May. 

The joint statement also said that the decision “on the production target for the second half of 2019” would be taken at an OPEC Conference meeting on June 25.

New OPEC+ committee members 

The move to wait until June took place amid confusion over the impact of US sanctions on OPEC members Iran and Venezuela, with Russia saying more time was needed due to high volatility.

Addressing Monday’s meeting, Saudi energy minister Khalid Al Falih urged OPEC+ members to maintain the alliance.

“It is more important than ever that we continue to collaborate,” he said.

OPEC, and mainly Saudi Arabia, have made it clear they would like to formalise longer-term cooperation with Russia, though Moscow has been hesitant.

Falih raised the issue again in Baku, saying that “institutionalising a framework for longer-term cooperation” was very important.

The alliance said after the talks that Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates had also become new members of the committee.

The pact has breathed fresh life into OPEC and brought Russia new influence as an arbiter on the oil market. 

Creating the alliance was not an easy decision after years of fierce competition for market share that lead to overproduction.

Uncertainty over US sanctions 

Russian energy minister Alexander Novak said it was hard to plan for months ahead because of the volatility due to the sanctions against Iran and Venezuela.

“We have to take these uncertainties into account in making decisions on the market,” he was quoted as saying ahead of Monday’s meeting.

US President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of a nuclear accord with Iran in May last year and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

From late April, US companies and citizens will be barred from dealing in Venezuelan crude, as Washington ramps up punishment against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

But Trump has also urged OPEC to take steps to lower prices, saying in a tweet last month: “Oil prices getting too high. OPEC, please relax and take it easy.”

The Saudi energy minister was defiant in response, saying at the time that OPEC was pursuing a measured response and that he was leaning towards extending production cuts in the second half of 2019.

Host Azerbaijan is one of the alliance’s non-OPEC members and analysts said the ex-Soviet republic has used its participation to court investment in its oil sector. 

After years of growth, Azerbaijan’s oil and gas production is stabilising.

Analysts at S&P Global Platts said the country is forging closer ties with Riyadh and in recent weeks hosted several Saudi delegations.

Azerbaijan “needs to attract new investment if it is to successfully replace current reserves and maintain production volumes over the next few decades,” they said.

PARIS — Workers began cleaning up the Champs Elysees in Paris on Sunday after rioters ransacked stores and restaurants in a new flare-up of violence linked to the yellow vest protest movement.

Cutting short a weekend ski trip, President Emmanuel Macron returned to Paris late on Saturday for a crisis meeting with ministers at which he ordered decisions to be taken rapidly “so this doesn’t happen again”, Reuters reported.

Some 80 shops and businesses on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris were vandalised this weekend when “yellow vest” protesters went on the rampage, with about 20 looted or torched, retailers said on Sunday.

Vandals left hardly a storefront or cafe unscathed on Saturday, breaking windows and looting luxury stores as they clashed with riot police.

Saturday’s demonstrations were characterised by a sharp increase in violence after weeks of dwindling turnout, with hooded protesters looting and torching shops along the famed avenue, according to the Agence France-Presse.

It was the 18th consecutive weekend of demonstrations which began in mid-November as a protest against fuel price hikes but have since morphed into a potent anti-government movement.

“There was a wave of violence; we’re dealing with the aftermath of the chaos. We’re trying to reassure all the employees and then there are those who live here, too,” said Jean-Noel Reinhardt, head of the Committee Champs-Elysees, a local association with 180 members, most of them businesses. 

He said residents and business owners were pushing for talks with Prime Minister Edouard Philippe “to share our exasperation and explain our complaints. “

“The authorities must put an end to this situation,” he insisted.

Since the beginning, the prestigious avenue, which is known for its shops, cafes and luxury boutiques, has been the focal point for the demonstrations which have often turned violent, sparking running battles between police and protesters. 

On Saturday, the police appeared overrun as protesters swarmed the area, vandalising and later setting fire to Fouquet’s brasserie, a favourite hangout of the rich and famous for the past century — as well as luxury handbag store Longchamp.

Clothing outlets Hugo Boss, Lacoste and Celio were also damaged, as well as a bank, a chocolatier and several newsstands. 

“Enough is enough. And this Saturday went too far!” raged Bernard Stalter, president of CMA France, a national network of chambers of trades and crafts. 

He also demanded a meeting with top ministers “this week in order to find solutions which will put an end to a situation which has become as volatile as it is unacceptable.”

BEIJING — The Chinese government has additional monetary policy measures that it can take to support economic growth this year, and will even cut "its own flesh" to help finance large-scale tax cuts, Premier Li Keqiang said on Friday.

China has promised billions of dollars in tax cuts and infrastructure spending to help businesses and protect jobs, as economic momentum is expected to cool further due to softer domestic demand and the trade war with the United States.

Li's comments suggest Beijing is ready to roll out more stimulus measures to ensure the economy grows within a targeted range of 6 to 6.5 per cent. Gross domestic product grew 6.6 per cent in 2018 — the least in 28 years.

Shares on Chinese stock exchanges climbed after the government reaffirmed its commitment to boosting growth. The yuan recovered from a three-week low against the dollar after Li's comments. 

"Of course, we are faced with many uncertain factors this year. We have to prepare more and we have reserved policy room [to address uncertainties]," Li told a news conference after the annual parliament meeting ended.

"Moreover, we can deploy quantity-based or price-based policy tools such as reserve requirements and interest rates. This is not monetary easing but to more effectively support the real economy."

The support measures rolled out so far are taking time to kick in and most analysts believe activity may not convincingly stabilise until the middle of the year. 

The central bank has cut banks' reserve requirement ratios (RRR) five times over the past year, with a two-stage RRR cut in January releasing a total of 1.5 trillion yuan ($223.23 billion) into the financial system.

Further cuts in RRR had been widely expected this year, after fresh data pointed to persistently soft demand in the Asian economic giant, raising fears of a sharper slowdown. 

Sources told Reuters in February that the central bank is not yet ready to cut benchmark interest rates to spur the slowing economy, but is likely to cut market-based rates.

The premier said the government would take multiple measures to lower funding costs for small and micro firms by 1 percentage point this year. 

An across-the-board cut in borrowing costs could also risk another flare-up in debt and speculative activity like that in the wake of the 2008-9 global financial crisis.

Cutting taxes, 

slitting wrists 

To help finance the tax cuts, the government would need to tighten its belt, Li said. 

China will bolster its national coffers by collecting more of the profits earned by some financial institutions and centrally-owned firms, while general expenditure will be cut, Li said. 

That will collectively cover 1 trillion yuan of the government's planned tax cuts, he said. 

"Large-scale tax cuts and fee reductions would affect the government, cutting its own flesh," Li said. "This kind of reform is equivalent to turning one's blade inward and slitting one's wrist."

Promised cuts in value-added tax (VAT) for manufacturing and other sectors will take effect from April 1, while social security fees will be reduced from May 1, Li said. 

The premier announced on March 5 that the VAT for the manufacturing sector would be cut to 13 per cent from 16 per cent. VAT for the transport and construction sectors will be reduced to 9 per cent from 10 per cent.

Li's comments "reconfirm a consistent pro-growth stance, with clarity on fiscal easing and an earlier-than-expected effective date for tax cuts", Morgan Stanley said in a note, adding that it expects improved growth from the second quarter.

Beijing's tax cut efforts have focused on the manufacturing sector and small businesses that are vital for economic growth and employment. Li said the government hopes to create 13 million jobs this year, the same as last year. 

"Not allowing the economy to slip out of a reasonable range, that is to say we will not allow waves of layoffs," said Li, adding the government will provide support to firms creating the most jobs. 

Data on Thursday showed that China's survey-based jobless rate rose to 5.3 per cent in February, from 4.9 per cent in December, partly due to job shedding by export-oriented companies.

Trade war 

China is still negotiating with the United States to resolve their trade frictions, Li said, adding both sides have far more shared interests than conflicts, and it would be "unrealistic" to decouple the world's two largest economies.

"We hope that the consultations will be fruitful and will achieve mutual benefit and win-win. I believe that this is also the expectation of the world," Li said. 

A summit to seal a trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not happen at the end of March as previously discussed, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday.

Washington and Beijing have been locked in a tit-for-tat tariff battle as US presses China for an end to practices and policies it argues have given Chinese firms unfair advantages, including subsidising of industry, limits on access for foreign companies and alleged theft of intellectual property.

On Friday, China's parliament approved a new foreign investment law that promises to create a transparent environment for foreign firms, though there is scepticism about its enforceability.

The law, designed to ease concerns among foreign companies about the difficulties they face in China, will ban forced technology transfer and illegal government "interference" in foreign business practices. 

Li stressed that China did not, and would never, ask Chinese companies to spy on other countries. 

His comments came after increased international scrutiny of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, which has been caught in the cross-fire as trade tensions ratcheted up.

BENGALURU — Facebook Inc. struggled to restore its services fully on Thursday after a 17-hour partial outage made the world's largest social network inaccessible to users across the globe, driving a wave of online complaints.

The number of reports on the crowd-sourced DownDetector website — one of the Internet's most used sources of numbers on outages — peaked at just over 12,000, gradually falling to a couple of hundreds by early on Thursday.

But with thousands of users complaining on Twitter under the hashtag #facebookdown, a number of media reports put the number affected in the millions. 

The BBC and a handful of other media outlets said it was the platform's longest ever outage. Reuters was not immediately able to verify those claims. 

Facebook representatives took to Twitter to update users on the problems. 

A Facebook spokesman, asked by Reuters for more details, would only repeat the company's initial statement on the outage on Wednesday, saying that it was working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. 

Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook apps were down for much of Wednesday, although the photo-sharing social network said it was back up early on Thursday.Facebook was yet to provide an update on its other services.

Social media users in some parts of the United States and Europe as well as in Japan were hit by the disruption, according to DownDetector's live outage map.

The Menlo Park, California-based company, which gets a vast majority of its revenue from advertising, told Bloomberg that it was still investigating the overall impact "including the possibility of refunds for advertisers".

On Twitter it also said that the matter was not related to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

In a DDoS attack, hackers use computer networks they control to send such a large number of requests for information from websites that servers that host them can no longer handle the traffic and the sites become unreachable.

OSLO — Norwegian Air said on Wednesday it will seek compensation from plane maker Boeing for costs and lost revenue after grounding its fleet of 737 MAX 8 aircraft in the wake of the Ethiopian Airlines crash.

“We expect Boeing to take this bill,” Norwegian said in an e-mailed statement.

The Oslo-based airline has 18 “MAX” passenger jets in its 163-aircraft fleet. European regulators on Tuesday grounded the aircraft following Sunday’s crash of a similar plane in Ethiopia, which killed 157 people and was the second crash involving that type of plane since October.

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said on Monday that he was confident in the safety of the 737 MAX in an e-mail to employees, which was seen by Reuters.

Industry sources, however, said the planemaker faces big claims after the crash.

Norwegian has bet heavily on the “MAX” to become its aircraft of choice for short- and medium-range flights in coming years as the low-cost carrier seeks to boost its fuel efficiency and cut the cost of flying.

“What happens next is in the hands of European aviation authorities. But we hope and expect that our MAXes will be airborne soon,” Norwegian Air’s founder and Chief Executive Bjoern Kjos said in a video recording released on social media.

“Many have asked questions about how this affects our financial situation. It’s quite obvious that we will not take the cost related to the new aircraft that we have to park temporarily. We will send this bill to those who produce this aircraft,” he added.

Idle planes will add to pressures on the airline, which is making losses amid intense competition at a time when several smaller European competitors have gone out of business.

The carrier has raised 3 billion Norwegian crowns ($348 million) from shareholders in recent months and said it would cut costs as it tries to regain profitability this year.

“If this situation gets solved within the next fortnight, this will not be very serious for Norwegian,” said analyst Preben Rasch-Olsen at brokerage Carnegie, adding that seasonally low demand in March likely leaves spare capacity.

“The little extra costs they are incurring, they can probably get that covered by Boeing,” Rasch-Olsen said.

“But if this situation continues into the Easter holidays, or May and June, then it is a problem. They [will] need to get in new planes. And then comes the costs.”

Europeans tend to book their summer holidays in May, so the grounding may not yet affect bookings for the peak season for the airline industry, the analyst said.

Meanwhile, Norwegian was maintaining its order for more aircraft of the same type from Boeing, spokesman Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen said.

Norwegian is expected to take delivery of dozens more of the “MAX” in coming years, raising the overall number to more than 70 by year-end 2021, according to recent company announcements.

Shares in the airline have now dropped 6.8 per cent this week as investors worried about the impact of the Ethiopian crash.

They fell by 4.8 per cent in early trade on Wednesday but later recovered to trade up 2.7 per cent by 12:46 GMT.

Norwegian cancelled some flights on Tuesday, and on Wednesday it cancelled at least three dozen departures, its website showed, most of which were due to fly from airports in Oslo, Stockholm and other Nordic cities.

The airline was booking passengers on to other flights and using other types of planes from its fleet to help fill the gaps.

In a separate statement, Norwegian said it would deploy one of its larger Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft to operate its daily route from Dublin to Stewart Airport north of New York city, replacing the grounded MAX.

ADDIS ABABA/PARIS — Major European nations Britain, Germany and France joined a wave of suspensions of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft on Tuesday as US President Donald Trump fretted over modern airplane design following a crash in Ethiopia that killed 157 people.

Suspension by respected European regulators was the worst setback yet for US planemaker Boeing in the wake of Sunday’s crash and put pressure on the United States to follow suit.

In response, the world’s biggest planemaker, which has seen billions of dollars wiped off its market value, said it understood the decisions but retained “full confidence” in the 737 MAX and had safety as its priority.

The cause of Sunday’s crash, which followed another disaster with a 737 Max five months ago in Indonesia that killed 189 people, remains unknown.

October’s Lion Air crash is also unresolved, but attention has focused so far on the role of a software system designed to push the plane down as well as airline training and maintenance.

Boeing says it plans to update the software in coming weeks.

There is no evidence yet whether the two crashes are linked.

“Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT,” Trump tweeted, lamenting that product developers always sought to go an unnecessary step further when “old and simpler” was superior. 

“I do not know about you, but I do not want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!” he added, without referring directly to Boeing or recent accidents.

Elsewhere in Europe, Ireland, Austria and Norwegian Air said they too would temporarily ground MAX 8 passenger jets as a precaution. Earlier, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Oman had also temporarily suspended the aircraft, following China, Indonesia and others the day before. 

The European Aviation Safety Agency, which has a major role in overseeing the design of aircraft and monitors some airline operations, was expected to make a statement later on Tuesday.

Experts say it is too early to speculate on the reason for the crash. Most are caused by a unique chain of human and technical factors.

DUBAI — Saudi Arabia plans to cut its crude oil exports in April to below 7 million barrels per day (bpd), while keeping its output well below 10 million bpd, a Saudi official said on Monday, as the kingdom seeks to drain a supply glut and support oil prices.

State-owned Saudi Aramco's oil allocations for April are 635,000bpd below customers' nominations, which are the requests made by refiners and clients for Saudi crude, the official said.

"Despite very strong demand from international waterborne customers at more than 7.6 million bpd, customers were allocated less than 7 million bpd," the official said, adding that Saudi exports in March would also be below 7 million bpd.

Oil prices have been supported this year by output cuts by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies. US sanctions on the oil industries of OPEC members Iran and Venezuela have also tightened supplies.

Benchmark Brent climbed above $66 a barrel on Monday, helped by comments by Saudi Oil Minister Khalid Al Falih that an end to OPEC-led supply cuts was unlikely before June and a report showed a fall US drilling activity.

April allocations by Aramco show "a deep cut of 635,000bpd from customer requests for its crude oil," the Saudi official said.

"This will keep production well below 10 million bpd in April," the official said, adding that this was also below the 10.311 million bpd that the kingdom had agreed as its production target under the OPEC-led deal on cutting supplies.

OPEC, Russia and other producers, known as OPEC+, agreed in December to reduce supply by 1.2 million bpd from January 1 for six months.

"Saudi Arabia is demonstrating extraordinary commitment to accelerating market rebalancing," the official said, adding that the kingdom expected other OPEC+ countries to show similar levels of contributions and high conformity to agreed cuts.

The Saudi energy minister said on Sunday that March oil output was 9.8 million bpd and the country, OPEC's biggest producer, planned to keep its April output at the same level.

Saudi Arabia's oil production in February fell to 10.136 million bpd, a Saudi industry source told Reuters on Friday, down from 10.24 million bpd in January. 

Saudi crude exports to the US market have slowed in past weeks, according to the International Energy Agency, while Asia's crude demand is set to drop in the second quarter due to seasonal refinery maintenance, which would limit supply.

Saudi Aramco plans to shut its Yanbu oil refinery for planned maintenance for one month from early March.

BEIJING — China has gone to great lengths to support its currency and would not devalue the renminbi to spur exports or combat trade frictions, the governor of the central bank said on Sunday.

Speaking on the sidelines of China’s annual parliamentary session, Yi Gang said Washington and Beijing had discussed exchange rates in recent trade talks and reached a consensus on many “crucial” issues.

US President Donald Trump has long accused Beijing of manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage and Washington has been seeking assurances on the exchange rate in the ongoing trade talks between the two nations.

“Let me stress here that we will never use the exchange rate for the purpose of competition, nor will we use the exchange rate to increase China’s exports or as a tool in handling trade frictions,” said Yi. 

“We have committed not to do this,” Yi told reporters.

He noted the US Treasury Department had declined many times to label China a currency manipulator in its semi-annual report on international exchange rates.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a bruising trade war since last year, imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way trade, which has left global markets reeling.

“The two sides reached consensus on many crucial and important issues,” Yi said, without specifying which issues.

China’s banking regulator told reporters earlier this week that the two sides would reach a consensus on the exchange rate and indicated it would not be a sticking point in the way of a larger trade agreement.

“China’s efforts and achievements in maintaining the basic stability of the renminbi exchange rate at a reasonable and balanced level are recognised by the whole world,” Yi said. 

In the past three or four years the exchange rate had been under market pressure to depreciate, Yi said, adding that Beijing had used up $1 trillion of China’s foreign currency reserves to stabilise the currency.

There have been conflicting comments from Washington and Beijing on the progress of negotiations.

Beijing is hopeful about its next round of trade talks with the US, China’s vice minister for commerce Wang Shouwen said on Saturday, after revealing that top negotiators had tried to hammer out a deal over a lunch of burgers and eggplant chicken in a recent round of talks.

Donald Trump on Friday said he remains optimistic but will not sign a pact unless it is a “very good deal”, and a top economic advisor said the US president could walk away from a bad deal.

The two sides were thought to be readying for a Trump-Xi meeting at the end of March, but the US ambassador to China said on Friday that the two countries were not yet ready to bring together the two leaders for a summit and deal signing.

BERLIN — Travel specialists say the overseas tourism industry could lose billions over the next five years if Britain crashes out of the European Union later this month without a divorce deal.

With just three weeks to go until Britain's scheduled departure from the bloc, the two sides have yet to agree a mutually acceptable deal.

Executives at the ITB travel trade fair in Berlin said many holidaymakers were in wait-and-see mode as uncertainty over visas, insurance and whether they will need an international licence to drive in EU countries weighed on sentiment.

"Brexit is a concern," Mark Okerstrom, chief executive of online-booking platform Expedia told reporters, adding it had seen a significant slowdown in people booking flights from and to the UK beyond the scheduled March 29 departure date.

Consultancy firm Oxford Economics said a no-deal Brexit could cause a 5 per cent fall in overseas travel and tourism trips by Britons in 2020. Market researcher Euromonitor said it would curb overseas spending by $5.3 billion between 2019-2025.

"We're not seeing that people aren't booking at all, but they are waiting a bit longer to make their decisions," said Christoph Debus, chief airlines officer at Thomas Cook Group, adding Brexit would hit tour operators harder than airlines.

Caroline Bremner, head of travel research at Euromonitor, said tour operators were trying to encourage early booking with flexible payment deals, low deposits and free child places, while some destinations, like Greece, have cut their prices.

Spain, the most popular destination for British sunseekers who accounted for 9 per cent of foreign visitors last year, is seen as the biggest loser from a no-deal Brexit, which could wipe off more than $1 billion in spending between 2019-2025, according to Euromonitor.

Seeking to protect an industry which accounts for 12 per cent of its economy, Spain last week approved a decree guaranteeing British residents and tourists’ access to healthcare for a specific time.

Turkey, which is rebounding following bomb attacks in 2016, is pitching itself as a value-for-money destination due to the pound's relative weakness against the euro, while Tunisia is sending a delegation to a London travel fair next month. 

Britain's tourism industry is also concerned that European tourists could stay away. Visit Britain warned in February of a sharp fall in European flight bookings for after March 29.

"The government needs to do more to improve sentiment towards the UK from visitors from continental Europe, which remain its largest market," Kate Nicholls, chief executive of lobby group Hospitality UK, told a hotel investment forum in Berlin.

LONDON — Sterling fell to a one-week low on Thursday after British and European Union sources said Brexit negotiations had hit an impasse.

Nothing at the moment suggests anything will change in Britain's Brexit talks with the European Union over the next 48 hours, a government source said on Thursday, adding that the EU was simply not moving.

EU Brexit negotiators rejected the latest proposals on the Irish backstop presented by Britain's Attorney General Geoffrey Cox in Brussels on Tuesday and told him to rework them and come back on Friday, EU diplomats said.

The pound fell 0.5 per cent to $1.3089. Against a weaker euro, it gained 0.3 per cent to 85.64 pence.

"Hope for any early success for the British government is all but gone now," said John Marley at FX risk management specialist, Smart Currency Business.

Further adding to the uncertainty was an amendment passed by Britain's House of Lords on Wednesday calling for the government to negotiate a customs union with the European Union, giving May a potential new headache in her Brexit plans. 

"Markets are getting conflicting signals from lawmakers in Britain and the negative news flow from Brussels on the negotiation process and that is keeping the pound in a tight range," said Nikolay Markov, a senior economist at Pictet Asset Management.

Most economists in a Reuters poll thought Brexit would be delayed by a few months and the two sides would eventually agree a free-trade deal, according to a Reuters poll conducted between February 28 and March 5.

Expected gauges of market volatility in the pound ticked higher though it remained well below levels seen in November 2018.