Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, cut its July prices for Asian crude buyers to close to the lowest level in four years on Wednesday, in what the market sees as the country’s attempt to regain market share.

Saudi Arabia has pushed OPEC+ this year to raise its output targets ahead of schedule.

OPEC+ has cited healthy demand and low stocks as the reasons behind increasing production. Those reasons would normally prompt producers to raise selling prices.

Saudi Arabia’s state firm Aramco (2223.SE), cut the official selling price for the flagship Arab light crude it sells to Asia for July to $1.20 a barrel above the Oman/Dubai average. The OSP premium for June was $1.40 a barrel and in May it was $1.20.

A Reuters survey had expected the price cut for Arab light in July to be 40 to 50 cents.

Saudi crude OSPs are usually released around the fifth day of each month, and set the price trend for other grades exported by Iran, Kuwait and Iraq, affecting about 9 million barrels per day of crude bound for Asia.

Eight OPEC+ countries met on Saturday and agreed to another big increase of 411,000 bpd for July, having increased by the same amount for May and June.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Siyi Liu in Singapore, Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru, Dmitry Zhdannikov and Ahmad Ghaddar in London; Editing by Jane Merriman, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Rod Nickel)