Donald Trump has said he would ask Saudi Arabia and other Opec nations to slash oil prices and doubled-down on his threat to use tarrifs.
In a speech to executives at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, the US president was 'surprised' the the price of oil hadn't been cut before the elections.
"Right now the price is high enough that that war will continue," he said, referring to the Russia-Ukraine war and suggesting that the higher oil price was helping to sustain funding for the conflict in Moscow.
"You gotta bring down the oil price, that will end that war. You could end that war," he added.
The comments came after he spoke to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday who pledged to invest $600billion in the US over the next four years. However, no figure was mentioned in the White House statement following the call.
Trump said he would be asking "the Crown Prince, who's a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1trillion."
The price of crude fell by 1% following Trump's comments.
On the same day, the president also ordered officials to declassify documents related to the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
"A lot of people are waiting for this for long, for years, for decades," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. "And everything will be revealed."
Many of the documents related to the investigations have been released in the years since, although thousands still remain redacted.
FTSE 100
The UK's flagship share index, the FTSE 100, was up 32-points at 8,573 shortly after opening this morning.
Brent crude oil futures were down 0.02%, trading at $78.30 a barrel.
Companies reporting today