Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, January 6th, and this is your F.T. news briefing.

Tuesday was a busy day for Saudi Arabia. The kingdom has pledged to make significant oil production cuts and

ended a serious feud with one of its neighbors. And in the U.S. Congress will today vote

to certify Joe Biden as the next US president.

Some Republicans plan to block that.

We'll take a look at what corporate America is saying and who they're funding.

I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Oil prices jumped yesterday after Saudi Arabia pledged to slash an extra 1 million barrels a day of production in February and March.

The oil market's been royaled by the pandemic's travel restrictions and lockdowns.

The Saudi oil minister said the move was meant to support the kingdom's economy and its

industry.

I asked the F.T.'s senior energy correspondent, Angela Rival, why else Saudi Arabia is making these cuts?

On the one hand, there is a sort of supply demand fundamentals point that is the backdrop to this decision.

But at the same time, something very intriguing happened,

which was that Prince Abdulaziz, who is Saudi Arabia's oil minister

and the son of the king, he said actually this decision was a sovereign political decision and he said it was taken with the purpose of supporting the country's economy. It was about supporting the economies of

colleagues in the OPEC Plus group and to support the wider industry and he was kind of

painting this as a picture of some kind of you know leadership position but I guess we have to see what the longer-term

impact of this decision will be for unity within the group and what it means for sort of the political dynamics within the group.

Meanwhile, Russia says it's going to increase its production.

What's going on here?

So on a complete surface level it looks like Russia has secured this

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