Soaring international crude prices are driven by a range of factors including speculation and depreciation of the US dollar, not mainly by China demand, Saudi Aramco regional vice president Mohammed al-Mahdi said today.

“It’s a mistake to attribute either the recent run-up in crude prices or continued market volatility solely to rising Chinese demand,” Al-Madi, regional vice president of Saudi Aramco in Beijing, told an industry conference.


He said a massive influx of speculative money into the oil futures markets, the weak dollar and tight capacities all along the petroleum value chain all contributed to the surges in prices.

Saudi Aramco was confident that the world would have plentiful supplies of oil for many decades, he told the China Oil Traders’ conference in Chengdu, Reuters reported.

“Estimates of total resources of oil-in-place and reservoir recovery rates have increased substantially over time,” he said. “More sophisticated exploration and production technologies will emerge in the future and supplies coming from non-conventional sources such as extra-heavy oil, tar sands and oil shales will also increase.”

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