Russia had already announced plans to cut its oil production by 500,000 barrels per day in March, amounting to 5% of its output or 0.5% of global production.
Russian officials said the voluntary output cuts in March would last one month and would follow the start of Western price caps on Russian oil on Dec 5. and oil products on Feb. 5. The cut will be made from January output levels.
Russia has so far managed to reroute most of its oil exports from Europe to India, China and Turkey, which happily snapped up cheap barrels and ignored Western sanctions.
But Moscow has struggled to re-route exports of refined product away from Europe after Indian, Chinese and Turkish refiners flooded the market with fuels produced from Russian oil.
U.S. Treasury officials have said the Russian decision to cut oil production reflects its inability to sell all its oil.
Washington has said it pushed for the introduction of price caps to limit revenues for President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine but have set them high enough to avoid a further spike in global oil prices.
"The export cuts appear to be deeper than the planned production cuts. It might help bump up the price for Russian oil," one of the sources said.
Russia's Energy ministry declined to comment. Russia's pipeline monopoly Transneft did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
