Saudi oil production breaks another record

Baku. 11 August. REPORT.AZ/ Saudi Arabia’s oil production rose to a record level in July as it moved to meet domestic demand and maintain pressure on regional rivals, with OPEC countries still locked in a battle for customers.

Report informs citing the Financial Times, data submitted by the kingdom to OPEC showed output jumped to 10.67m barrels a day last month, up 123,000 b/d on June and surpassing the previous record of 10.56m b/d from June last year.

Saudi Arabia usually pumps more crude oil during the summer months to meet a seasonal increase from domestic power companies trying to satisfy air-conditioning demand.

In July, parts of Saudi Arabia endured record-breaking temperatures above 50 degrees centigrade.

But the kingdom’s oil production is under intense scrutiny after it promised its OPEC peers in June that it would not flood the market with its oil. Rival OPEC countries will be watching closely to see if it pulls back production once temperatures cool as it did last year, lowering output to about 10.2m b/d between September and May.

Notably, yesterday US Energy Information Agency disclosed figures related to Stocks of Crude Oil for August 3-10 reporting week. This figure shown increase of 1,055 mln barrels instead of projected decrease of 1.025 million. As a result, oil prices shown decrease after the growth trend in recent days. Analytical group of Report notes "Brent" crude oil prices fell 4.3% yesterday from 45.77 USD / barrel to 43.81 USD / barrel . Oil prices may continue to decline in the near future up to 38 USD / barrel.