Saudi Arabia is Opec’s real winner - FT.com

Defeated; humiliated; overpowered… Saudi Arabia appeared to come out from the last meeting of the Opec oil cartel as the loser after it failed to get backing for its proposal to boost output, with its opponent Iran victorious.

Yet two months later Riyadh is proving that first impressions are often misleading. If someone was defeated, it clearly was Tehran.

Since the June 8 Opec meeting in Vienna, Saudi Arabia has boosted unilaterally its crude oil production, reaching la 30-year high of 9.8m barrels a day last month. At the same time, Iran’s own oil output has plunged to its lowest level in more than 8 and a half years at 3.5m b/d, according to fresh estimates by the International Energy Agency.

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