Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could help to calm volatile oil markets if they pumped more crude, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are the two oil producers with the most spare production capacity and could help to relieve dwindling global oil inventories that have helped to send prices towards $100 a barrel, deepening inflation worldwide.

“These risks, which have broad economic implications, could be reduced if producers in the Middle East with spare capacity were to compensate for those running out,” the Paris-based agency said in its montly oil report.

The IEA said that effective spare capacity could fall to 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the year, held up almost entirely by Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, the UAE.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Noah Browning Editing by David Goodman)