Specifically on oil cuts, Moscow’s former energy minister Vladimir Milov said on Friday there were "too many technical challenges” for Russia to achieve its 2.5 million bpd quota for cuts. “Production cuts of such magnitude have never been done in Russia so we are venturing into the unknown,” Milov, now an opposition politician, told the Wall Street Journal. Russia is key to the so-called GLOPEC production pact between global producers, including the United States, and the OPEC cartel led by Saudi Arabia that aims to reduce at least 9.7 million barrels per day from world supply to partially offset 20 million to 30 million of demand lost to the coronavirus pandemic. Without Moscow’s earnest participation, global oil inventories may not fall quickly enough for the market’s liking. Russia Not Geared For Quick And Deep Cuts According to those in the know, Russia’s oil infrastructure isn’t geared for quick and deep production cuts as the frigid Siberian climate can cause pipelines to burst without oil in them. Low-yielding Soviet-era fields are also expensive to maintain and restart, thus major Russian oil companies are lobbying the energy ministry for exemptions from the cuts, the Journal quoted industry analysts in Moscow as saying. Mikhail Krutikhin, a partner at the independent RusEnergy consulting agency that advised Russian oil companies in recent weeks on the cuts, concurs with Milov. “They just don’t know how to do it,” he said of the companies that are supposed to be contributing to the cuts. “It’s a completely new paradigm.” A Bloomberg survey on Friday showed that OPEC’s most powerful member, Saudi Arabia, pumped a record of more than 11 million barrels a day as it waged a price war against its former ally Russia. Though they reached a truce by mid-April, striking a deal to cut vast amounts of supply, the Saudis continued to keep production high for much of the month—even with demand suffering an unprecedented free-fall, Bloomberg reported. As of two weeks ago, at least 160 million barrels were now stored at sea, outside global shipping ports from Singapore to Suffolk and along the U.S. Gulf Coast of Mexico. Forecasts suggest that the world’s conventional oil storage—which can hold about 3.4 billion barrels—will be filled to its limits by the end of May.