Saudi Wages Price War Against Russia in April

While Europe used to be the largest market for Russian oil exports, Saudi Arabia has recently sent a record number of oil tankers to Egypt. The shipment data compiled by Bloomberg shows that as of March, Saudis daily oil exports to Egypt reached 1.3 million barrels, the highest level in at least 3 years.

The freights will be shipped to a terminal at the southern end of Suez Canal, where theyll be further transferred to the storage and exportation facilities in the Mediterranean region.

At the beginning of March, Saudi already began cutting official price of oil exported to Europe by an unprecedented level, which makes the actual price of oil sold to Europe to be US$10 / barrel.

As the global oil demand is experiencing a historical slump(down by 26 million barrel per day, according to statistics from Goldman Sachs), European oil plants are reducing their output to avoid excessive inventory.

But Saudis ramping up of crude export to Europe can slash Russian oil export by 1 million barrels per day.

The greatest challenge facing Russian oil industry is the permanent loss of capacity after part of the producers with higher costs are crushed by Saudi‘s move. A HFI research estimates that about 10% of Russian’s oil producing capacity will be lost irreversibly and Russias daily output will reduce by 500 thousand to 1 million barrels permanently.

The energy sector is seeing perhaps one of the most frantic moments in history, with the pricing getting out of control.