Saudi Aramco Cuts Asia Crude Prices, Arab Light Discount Widens to $5 per Barrel

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 5, Saudi Aramco lowered its official selling prices for crude oil destined for Asia in November. Among them, Arab Light crude was priced at a discount of $5 per barrel against the average of Oman and Dubai crude, down $3 per barrel from October, the lowest discount level since June 2020. Saudi Arabia also cut prices for other heavier crude grades sold to Asia by about $5 per barrel.

During the same period, shipping costs for crude oil from the Middle East to Asia remained elevated. On October 2, the daily charter rate for very large crude carriers on the Middle East-to-China route was about $1.2 million, compared with about $80,000 per day a year earlier. The November price cuts for Saudi crude sold to Asia coincided with high shipping costs during the same period.

Saudi Aramco applied different November pricing adjustments across regions. Prices for crude sold to Northwest Europe were raised by $3 per barrel across the board, with Arab Light crude shifting from a discount of $2.15 per barrel against ICE Brent to a premium of $0.85 per barrel; prices for crude sold to the United States remained unchanged.

Middle East crude oil exports have rebounded recently. On October 6, Vitol Group CEO Russell Hardy said that about 12 million barrels per day of crude oil and 2 million barrels per day of refined products had been exported from the Middle East over the past 7–10 days. During the same period, Saudi Arabia's energy minister said that the volume of crude oil transported through the Saudi East-West Pipeline had reached 5.8 million barrels, with the pipeline connecting oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea export facility at Yanbu.

OPEC+ decided on October 4 to keep its November production target unchanged. Participating countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and Oman will still retain production cuts of about 2 million barrels per day, with the next meeting scheduled for November 1.