OREANDA-NEWS. "We think that freezing or even cutting crude production is probably the only right decision to preserve the stability of the global energy [sector]... It will speed up market rebalancing," said Russian president Vladimir Putin today.

He said that Russia is ready to join Opec countries in restraining crude output and that he urges other non-Opec producer countries to do the same.

Putin said he hopes that Opec will complete an agreement on production in late November at its next ministerial meeting. Opec ministers meeting in Algiers last month tasked a technical committee with drawing up the parameters of a deal to hold their output at 32.5mn-33mn b/d.

Russian production reached 11.1mn b/d in September, the highest since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Putin offered no detail on whether Russia would freeze or trim production or from what base line, or for how long it would cut.