MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. Slow global recovery after the 2008-2009 economic crisis is the main reason for a fall in world oil prices, a prominent Russian academician and ex-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov told TASS.

“The political component in the oil price fall is present but this does not make me a supporter of various conspiracy theories,” Primakov said in an interview with TASS, adding that the period of low oil prices and the expensive US dollar would hardly last several years.

“I don’t think this will happen. But this does not mean that we should not ignore this possibility in the solution of internal economic tasks,” Primakov, a member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the interview.

World oil prices have been hovering close to their minimum levels since the summer of 2012. The Financial Times earlier put forward two conspiracy theories, which could explain Saudi Arabia’s decision to lower prices under oil export contracts.

The first theory is that the Saudis could be in a tie-up with the United States in a bid to increase pressure on the Russian economy amid the political crisis in Ukraine. The second theory attributes this decision to the Arab oil suppliers’ attack on expensive US projects for the development of shale oil fields, which will turn unprofitable amid an oil price fall and will have to quit the market.