The world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, saw its crude oil exports in June drop to their lowest on record at just below 5 million barrels per day (bpd), as OPEC’s de facto leader led efforts from the OPEC+ group to withhold a record amount of crude from the market in response to the crash in demand.
According to data from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI), Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports plunged by 17.3 percent in June compared to May, to stand at 4.98 million bpd.
Since March this year, Saudi crude oil exports have diverged a lot from the latest five-year range, jumping to more than 10 million bpd in April, when the Kingdom made good on its promise to flood the market with oil after the collapse of the previous OPEC+ deal. Saudi Arabia exported a record 10.237 million bpd in April 2020, up from 7.391 million bpd in March, JODI data showed earlier this year.
In May, Saudi crude oil exports plunged to 6.02 million bpd from more than 10 million bpd in the previous month, after OPEC+ reached a new deal to prop up the market and erase the glut that was building while global demand was crashing by 20 million bpd in April.
June was also the month in which Saudi Arabia voluntarily slashed its oil production by an additional 1 million bpd on top of the 2.5 million bpd it was supposed to cut.
Total Saudi oil exports, including crude oil and oil products, fell further month-on-month in June – by 1.41 million bpd to 6.07 million bpd, according to the data released by the JODI database, which collects self-reported figures from 114 countries.
Despite the easing of the OPEC+ cuts as of August 1, Saudi Arabia has signaled it would not rush to ramp up its crude oil exports significantly this month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com