Saudi Arabia will stick to non-intervention as oil prices rise - FT.com

Saudi Arabia will stick to non-intervention as oil prices rise - FT.com:



"As oil prices halved last year, investors and traders kept expecting Saudi Arabia to intervene. It took oil minister Ali al-Naimi and his officials months to persuade everyone that the kingdom was quite content to let market forces determine prices and clean up excess supply.



Now that oil is on the way up again — Brent at $65 a barrel has risen by nearly 50 per cent from its January low — markets are once more waiting for Saudi to act: this time to stop prices from rising too rapidly so that they do not choke off a global recovery and encourage battered US shale oil producers to redeploy rigs. Some are pointing to a surge in Saudi crude output from 9.7m barrels per day in January and February to 10.3m in March and a push to regain US market share as evidence that Riyadh is indeed turning pushy.



This view is being reinforced by a dramatic power shuffle that has forced Naimi to surrender the chairmanship of Aramco (the world’s largest oil company) and put new King Salman’s youngest son Mohammad in charge of a new Supreme Council atop Aramco, even though the 34-year old has no oil sector experience."



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