More and more experts working in the oil industry start discussing a new wave of price dumping initiated by Saudi Arabia. That thing is that a couple of weeks ago, the Saudis dropped their oil export prices to Asian countries by 0.7-1.3 dollars per barrel.
If the dumping war used to be targeted at U.S. shale oil producers to oust them from the market, this time Saudi Arabia is targeting Russia and other oil exporters. Some experts believe that Saudi Arabia is trying to take away the Chinese market from Russia. While other oil exporters keep on urging their partners to get together and discuss the ways to stabilize the market, Saudi Arabia keeps on fighting for new outlets.
At the same time, China’s customs service confirms that fact that Russia and Saudi Arabia are currently fighting for the right to export crude oil to China. For those of you who don’t know, the Saudis already outpaced the Russian Federation in 2015 to become the biggest exporter of crude oil to China. Still, they seem to be unconfident in their leadership and want to consolidate it.
For instance, the Russian Federation shipped 4.1 million tons of crude oil to China. This is 22% less than before. At the same time, Saudi Arabia shipped 4.6 million tons of crude oil to China. This is 12% more than before.
At the same time, Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iraq’s success on selling crude oil to India. It turns out that the Saudis yielded some of their oil export to Iraq when it comes to the Indian market.
Meanwhile, Venezuela keeps in urging other major oil exporters to gather another emergency summit and discuss the future of the international oil market as well as their own future. For now, there is no confidence in when the summit is going to take place and whether it is going to take place at all in the near future. Some experts say that the summit is planned for September while others deny this possibility. Even if such an emergency summit does take place, chances are Saudi Arabia will decline any idea of freezing oil production since they are definitely trying to increase their global market share by all means and cutting oil production is definitely not what they are looking for right now.
