REUTERS
Saudi Arabia on Sunday made deep reductions to the prices it charges for its oil, hard on the heels of cuts last month by rival producers in the Gulf, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The move comes as Iran, Iraq and other countries in the Middle East made deeper cuts in their official prices than Saudi Arabia last month, the report said.
In a list of official prices sent to customers, state-oil company Saudi Aramco cut the price of its light-crude deliveries to Asia by $1.7 a barrel. As a result, it switched to a discount of $1.6 a barrel against the rival Dubai benchmark from a premium of 10 cents a barrel previously. The company also cut its prices for heavy oil by $2 a barrel to the Far East and by 30 cents a barrel to the U.S., it said.
In recent months, oil production in Saudi Arabia amounted to 10 million barrels per day, almost equal to Russia's oil output. In September, Russian oil producers boosted output to 10.74 million barrels per day, a record high volume since the Soviet times.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported that as of 08:00 local time on Monday morning, the price of Brent crude oil rose by 0.75% to $48.49 per barrel, while U.S. WTI was 0.8% up, to $45.89 per barrel.