Saudi Arabia reduced crude oil exports in April as the world’s biggest producer used record supplies domestically for a burgeoning refining industry. Shipments fell to 7.74 million barrels a day from 7.9 million in March, the Riyadh-based Joint Organisations Data Initiative said on its website Thursday. The nation processed 2.22 million barrels a day in domestic refineries in April, the most since at least January 2002 when JODI started collecting statistics from governments. Saudi Arabia began operating a 400,000 barrel-a-day refinery at Yanbu on the Red Sea last year. Another plant with the same capacity is scheduled to begin operation in 2017 at Jazan in the country’s southwest. The kingdom’s oil-product exports rose 44 percent last year following the startup of a refinery in the Gulf port of Jubail, according to JODI data. “Saudi needs more crude to stay at home,” Kamel al-Harami, an independent oil analyst in Kuwait, […]