Saudi Arabia has been forced to return to the role of swing producer in the oil market, despite the country’s insistence for three decades it would never play the role again. Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) account for the majority of production cuts made so far under the OPEC and non-OPEC accords reached in November and December. By cutting their own output deeply, Saudi Arabia and its allies have masked the low level of compliance from the rest of the organization. Outside OPEC, Russia has so far delivered only around a third of its promised cut of 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to sources. Russia and other producers have always pledged to phase in cuts, which are meant to be averaged over the first six […]