MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Saudi Aramco hiked the price of its flagship crude to its main buyers in Asia for May after OPEC+ agreed to keep current cuts in place and as the Middle Eastern oil market shows signs of strengthening, Bloomberg reported with reference to the date of the Saudi company.

According to the agency, the price of Arab Light oil for Asian buyers has been increased by $0.3 per barrel. That means that, the price turned out to be $2 higher than the regional benchmarks Oman/Dubai. At the same time, traders, as Bloomberg notes, expected an increase in the cost of Saudi oil for Asia by $0.1 per barrel.

At a meeting on April 3, the OPEC+ ministerial monitoring did not make recommendations on changing the alliance’s oil production policy. From the first quarter of 2024, several alliance countries, including Russia and Saudi Arabia, are voluntarily reducing oil production by a total of 2.2 million barrels per day to balance the market. Initially, the measure was supposed to be in effect only during the first quarter, but in early March the alliance countries extended its validity into the second quarter.

Meanwhile Brent price remained at about $85 per barrel for almost the entire March, and on the eve of April 3, it exceeded $91 per barrel for the first time since the end of October 2023. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that the current increase in oil prices was due to the tense situation in the Middle East.