The world's top crude oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and the world's largest crude importer, China, jointly stressed on Friday the importance of stable long-term crude supply to the market, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and Zhang Jianhua, the director of China's National Energy Administration (NEA), have also agreed to continue cooperation in their efforts to keep the global crude oil market stable, according to the Saudi state agency.
After agreeing with its fellow OPEC+ members to reduce the group's crude oil production target by 2 million barrels per day (bpd) as of November, Saudi Arabia is now on a charm offensive with its biggest Asian buyers, China and India, to ensure "market stability," as the biggest exporters of crude and the largest importer of crude say.
A day after the OPEC+ alliance announced the production cut, Saudi Arabia left the official selling price for Asia of its flagship Arab Light grade unchanged for November loadings compared to October. This defied expectations of refiners and analysts of a slight rise in Saudi oil prices for Asia for November in response to signs of recovering crude demand in one of its biggest markets and the new batch of fuel export quotas issued by China.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to slam Saudi Arabia and OPEC+ for the "short-sighted" and "misguided" decision to reduce supply.
The OPEC+ decision came at "the worst possible moment" and will have a wide-ranging impact on the economy and inflation, Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, said this week. The United States said last week there would be some consequences for Saudi Arabia for its decision together with Russia to steer OPEC+ into a large oil production cut.
Since the U.S. started criticizing the OPEC+ move, multiple OPEC+ producers have defended the group's decision to reduce production, saying it was dictated by technical analysis and had no political intentions whatsoever.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More