This makes the world’s largest oil exporter a new measure to tighten the oil market and avoid a surplus of oil, reports Bloomberg.
State energy company Aramco has announced that it is increasing the price for June delivery of Arab Light by 90 cents to $2.90 above the official selling price for Middle East oil. These prices apply to customers in Asia, where by far the largest customer group is located. The prices of other types of oil will also increase.
With Saudi Arabia at the forefront, OPEC has for a long time aimed to increase global oil prices in order to strengthen its own budgets. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has previously estimated that the kingdom needs an oil price of close to 100 dollars just to balance the budget.
In April last year, it became known that OPEC would temporarily cut production by one million barrels per day to achieve just this. However, the oil price has struggled to stay up, partly due to increased production in the US and other western countries.
The recent unrest in the Middle East sent oil prices up significantly, but now that there are few signs of new escalations between Iran and Israel, the risk premium has almost disappeared.
