Saudi Arabia has traditionally had a lock on Asian oil markets. In Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the kingdom’s barrels make up about one third of crude oil imports . In China, that position is now under threat from Russia. Russia has shrugged off Western sanctions over Ukraine and enjoyed a plunge in production costs thanks to the ruble’s slide against the greenback. It briefly surpassed Saudi as China’s leading crude supplier in May and will strengthen its position over the next decade as it builds a second pipeline to the country, according to BMI Research : Saudi Arabia isn’t about to take the challenge lying down. State-owned Saudi Aramco is looking at multi-billion-dollar deals to buy marketing, refining and retail assets from China’s CNPC, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. It’s already receiving record quantities of crude at its leased storage tanks on Japan’s Okinawa archipelago. Sabic, the world’s […]