Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, is finalizing proposals for the sale of less than 5% of its value and will present them to its Supreme Council soon, company CEO Amin Hassan Nasser said Tuesday, Kallanish Energy reports.
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Earlier this year oil prices rallied nearly 40pc from twelve year lows after Mr Naimi said that members of the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (Opec) would meet with non-Opec oil producers in Doha to thrash out a production freeze deal.
The announcement, which is likely to result in another dip in oil prices as traders play on the negative news, though not unexpected, comes as Aramco talks about global expansion and moves towards a partial IPO. Of that total amount, it directly controls 3.1 million barrels a day of capacity, he said.
Former Hajj Minister Bandar al-Hajjar, who helped oversee last year’s tragic pilgrimage that saw more than 100 pilgrims killed by a crane collapse and more than 2,400 killed in a crush of crowds, was replaced by Mohammed Bintin. Croft noted that recently rising tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran were coming to a head.
The record-level production is Saudi Arabia’s strategy to tackle the slump in oil prices, which plunged over 70% from June 2014 to February, this year. By comparison, Falih was “more accepting of not including Iran”.
Brent had climbed as high as $46.48 a barrel in the wake of the continuing Canadian wildfire in the country’s oil sands region, which has hit more than a million barrels of daily production.
Al-Falih has given no indication that he will alter Saudi Arabia’s current production policy.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia wants to end its reliance on oil.
“We see the market balancing sometime in 2016, we see demand ultimately exceeding supply and soaking up a lot of the excess inventory, and prices in due course will respond, regardless of when and by how much”, Falih told a news conference in Riyadh in late December.
Deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman estimates the company is worth more than $2 trillion. The prince is letting the market dictate prices, with Saudi Arabia only adjusting its production to respond to demand.
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Croft said Salman’s oil policy “appears to be an extension of his provocative foreign policy efforts to roll back Iranian influence”. “It’s not an appointment in view of the next Opec meeting”.
