OREANDA-NEWS. Non-Opec oil producers Mexico and Russia have discarded the possibility of cutting production to prop up prices.

"Mexico does not plan to participate in any mechanism to reduce production," Mexican finance secretary Luis Videgaray said yesterday on the sidelines of a congressional budget presentation.

"One of the fundamental objectives of this [energy] reform comes out of the fact that Mexico can produce more oil, to take advantage of the natural wealth that belongs to the nation and to all Mexicans," he said.

Mexico is in the throes of implementing a sweeping energy reform that dismantled the monopoly of state-owned Pemex. The government signed first-ever production-sharing contracts with private-sector oil companies last week, and hopes the reform will reverse a decade-long decline in production.

Similarly, Russia has specifically rebuffed overtures from Opec member Venezuela to take joint measures to stabilize the oil market, in spite of Venezuelan government declarations to the contrary.

"Specific measures to cooperate or coordinate actions jointly were not discussed, and no pledges were exchanged by presidents Putin and Maduro," a Caracas-based Russian diplomat said, reiterating a Kremlin statement issued yesterday.

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week.

Putin and Maduro only spoke about "ways of exchanging information more effectively in a highly unstable oil price environment," the diplomat told Argus.

Maduro said after his Beijing meeting with Putin that Russia and Venezuela had agreed on specific price-boosting measures.

Opec recently indicated that it will maintain its policy of defending market share, even at the cost of lost revenues from a lower oil price, saying demand forecasts are such that "it is just a case of riding out the storm and waiting for calmer waters to return".

In the latest Opec Bulletin, Opec said its own figures show world oil demand rising by 1.38mn b/d this year from last year, with growth of 1.34mn b/d expected in 2016, and said this "should play a big role in helping to restore market stability." And its figures factor in a GDP growth rate in China of below 7pc, pointing to accelerating growth in India and saying Russia and Brazil are moving out of recession.