Ibrahim al-Muhanna has taken a more back seat role since the May 2016 retirement of former Oil Minister Ali Naimi, for whom he was both right hand man and key interlocutor. But the distribution by the Saudi Oil Ministry of a key speech he made this week indicates that it represents the official view.

“The wolf of lower oil prices is behind us,” Mr Muhanna told the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington DC on 25 September. “Had it not been for” the historic late-2016 Opec/non-Opec deal to cut 1.8mn b/d from collective output “today’s oil prices might have been lower than $30/B.” (CONTINUED - 429 WORDS)