Saudi Arabia’s leadership in OPEC+ with voluntary cuts to production has proven to be costly, sending its receipts from oil sales abroad down by a third, to its lowest in over a year, according to a report in Bloomberg, which cited the Kingdom’s General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT).
The kingdom’s oil exports dropped to just over $19 billion during May, according to data from the General Authority for Statistics that includes both crude and refined products. The share of oil sales in total exports fell to 74% from nearly 81% a year ago, Bloomberg reports.
The decline is a turnaround from 2022, in which the Kingdom saw a windfall of oil revenues.
However, this year, the kingdom said it would prolong production cuts it started earlier in 2023 in an effort to boost prices by keeping a lid on supply amid persisting fears over the global economy, Bloomberg notes.
Meanwhile, US investment bank Goldman Sachs sees oil demand reaching an all time high this year, driving up prices, according to comments made by an executive on CNBC.
“We expect pretty sizable deficits in the second half with deficits of almost 2 million barrels per day in the third quarter as demand reaches an all-time high,” Goldman’s head of oil research Daan Struyven told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.
Oil prices edged higher on Tuesday, extending gains from the previous session, as signs of tighter supplies and pledges by Chinese authorities to shore up the world’s second-biggest economy lifted sentiment.
