Saudi Arabia committed to oil market stability; higher gasoline prices on refining shortage: Al-Jubeir

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir

Saudi Arabia is committed to ensuring stability in oil markets to the benefit of consumers and producers, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir told Fox News TV.

He added that oil output was increased gradually after noticing a shortage in the market.

“We’re seeing headwinds in terms of geopolitics, growth rates and slowdown in economies.

We want to make sure that we act in a pre-emptive fashion to ensure that we don’t have a collapse of the energy markets. This would be detrimental not only to producers but also to consumers and the global economy,” Al-Jubeir noted.

Saudi Arabia does not politicize oil or oil decisions, the minister said, adding, “We look at oil as a commodity. The idea that Saudi Arabia would do this to harm the US or to be in any way politically involved is absolutely not correct at all.”

“With due respect the reason you have high prices in the US is because refining shortage and not building new refineries in the US and Western countries, as well as closing some of them,” Al-Jubeir said.