and Arab Extra Light, a mere $1.55 per barrel, which goes on to show just how tight medium sour supply is across the Asian continent. For reference, the same spread in Northwest Europe is $3.50 per barrel, more than double the Asian. Source: Saudi Aramco.
Right after the August OSPs were published, Saudi Aramco stated that it would provide Asian buyers with full requested volumes for the month, suggesting that the production cuts were in a sense also a reaction to much lower Asian buying. The same pledge of delivering full term volumes was also repeated for European customers, however the situation in Europe is in many ways different.
Chart 7. Kuwait Export Blend official selling prices into Asia, compared with Arab Medium and Iran Heavy .KPC, the Kuwaiti national oil company, hiked its Asian prices by $0.30 per barrel to a $2.25 per barrel premium vs Oman/Dubai, slightly more than Saudi Aramco increased its Arab Light and Arab Medium cargoes. It might be argued that Kuwait could have increased prices even more given the rapid decrease in exported volumes – flows have dropped below 1.