OREANDA-NEWS. At least three consumers of oil in Saudi Arabia requested 30–50% higher volumes from them than they had originally planned in April. As Bloomberg reports on Tuesday, citing sources, such a move is due to Riyadh lower oil prices.

According to interlocutors, two of these customers are oil refineries located in northeast Asia. They plan to process part of the additional purchases, and intend to send the rest of the volume to storage.

According to the agency, additional purchases of oil from Riyadh may mean that consumers will buy significantly lower volumes in the spot market. This, in turn, could negatively affect the markets where companies usually sell oil through tenders and spot transactions, which affects western Africa and part of the flow of Russian oil.

Oil prices fell amid news that OPEC+ countries, following talks in Vienna, could not agree on an additional reduction in production amid falling demand due to the spread of coronavirus. OPEC proposed to further reduce production by 1.5 million barrels per day until the end of this year, but Russia and Kazakhstan opposed this.