According to Bloomberg, in 2020, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia had an ambitious plan to take full control of the oil market. He had such an opportunity when Moscow and Saudi Arabia had a short-term conflict over oil production. Energy minister Abdel Aziz bin Salman Al Saud admitted that back then, the kingdom's authorities wanted to flood markets with their oil.
As a reminder, in March 2020, Saudi Arabia proposed cutting oil production against the background of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the Russian authorities refused to go along with the agreement. In response, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia decided to increase production capacity.
Thanks to these measures, OPEC and its allies came to an agreement to lower production by 1 million barrels per day, Abdel Aziz bin Salman Al Saud noted. The official believes that this conflict has shown who holds the reins in the oil market.
Earlier, Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, again raised oil prices for buyers from Asia. In May, they will pay for oil even more. This was an unpleasant surprise because after OPEC's decision to further reduce production, market participants expected a decline in oil prices.
