If you are waiting for Saudi Arabia to save the oil market, don’t hold your breath.
The country will not cut production and give up its market share in order to prop up prices, the chairman of Saudi Aramco said at the World Economic Forum in Davos
“We are not going to accept to withdraw our production to make space for others,” Khalid al-Falih said at a panel hosted by CNN’s emerging markets editor John Defterios.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s second biggest oil producer and the top crude exporter. “This is the position that we’ve earned…we are not going to leave that position to others,” al-Falih said.
He said Saudi Arabia has in the past played the role of a “reserve bank” in the oil market, smoothing short terms shocks. The country has acted during the financial crisis and during civil unrest and wars in oil producing regions that have disrupted supplies.
But it will not step in to fix the hugely oversupplied market.
“Saudi Arabia has never advocated that it would take the sole role of balancing market against structural imbalance,” he said at the CNN panel.
