Since this year, Saudi Arabia has been competing with Russia for the position of China’s largest source of imported oil market, and the competition is fierce. Official data shows that Saudi oil exports to China plunged 30% in October. However, what is puzzling is that the country did not strengthen its price advantage, but began to increase prices.
The latest market news on December 7 showed that Saudi Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, announced that it will The price of Arabian Light crude oil sold to Asia increased by 80 cents/barrel in October, from a price of $0.50/barrel below the benchmark price in October to $0.30/barrel above the benchmark price. This shows that next year Saudi oil is likely to fall into a competitive disadvantage and lose to Russia.
Some analysts pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s decision was mainly due to the improvement in the global economic outlook in November due to favorable factors such as vaccines, and the international oil price also surged by 30%. %. In this context, Saudi Arabia hopes to test whether Asian buyers can accept this price by raising prices for Asian buyers with the strongest demand.
At a time when global oil demand is sluggish, it is China’s strong demand that supports the international oil market. The latest data from the General Administration of Customs on December 7 showed that from January to November this year, China imported a total of 504 million tons of crude oil. But in the final analysis, China’s desire to buy oil is so strong because oil prices are at historically low levels, and stocking up at this time is profitable.
However, with the sharp increase in the price of Saudi oil, it is no longer cheap to buy oil at this time. Chinese buyers are likely not to pay more, but may turn to other countries such as Russia. Cheaper oil. Vortexa data shows that in November, Russia lost 1.49 million barrels per day of oil exports to China to Saudi Arabia, and is now making full efforts to increase exports to China.
It can be seen that once Russia takes advantage of its price advantage to launch an offensive, the price increase of Saudi oil may not last long. </p
