Saudi Arabia may hike oil price to record as supplies from Russia drop
One of the world's largest exporters of oil is likely to increase the prices of its main crude variant to a record level despite demands dropping as China battles a fresh Covid-19 upsurge.
Saudi Aramco may raise the official selling price of Arab Light by $5 a barrel to Asian customers for May-loading cargoes, as per the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of five refiners and traders.
The move would increase the differential to $9.95 above the Oman-Dubai benchmark, which would be the widest since the data and media company began compiling the data in 2000.
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When contacted the state-run company did not respond, wrote Bloomberg in a recent report adding that Aramco typically releases official prices in the first five days of the month.
Official selling prices, or OSPs, are the premiums or discounts to regional benchmarks for barrels, and they determine how much users pay for cargoes. The differentials can indicate the strength or weakness of underlying demand.
On a separate front, OPEC+ is scheduled to meet on Thursday and have signalled there is no immediate plan to add supply even as the war in Ukraine disrupted the supply of crudes in decades
