The next meeting of oil ministers from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may be more than two weeks away but Venezuela has fired the first salvo. It has stated that the oil cartel should cut its output by up to 1m barrels a day.

The call from Opec’s fourth biggest producer comes days after the cartel trimmed the demand outlook for this year, and follows a sharp fall in prices this week. The drop was triggered by swelling oil and petroleum product inventories in the US, the world’s biggest oil consumer.