Saudi Oil Officials: Oil could exceed $180/bbl if disruptions continue into late April

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Oil officials in Saudi Arabia are projecting that oil prices could soar past $180 a barrel if disruptions due to the Iran war persist until late April, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Reuters cannot immediately verify the report.

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Saudi Arabia’s oil officials are working frantically to project how high oil prices might go if the Iran war and its disruption of energy supplies doesn’t end soon—and they don’t like what they are seeing.

The base case, several oil officials in the Gulf’s biggest producer said, is that prices could soar past $180 a barrel if the disruptions persist until late April.

While that would sound like a bonanza for a kingdom still heavily leveraged to oil revenue, it is deeply concerning. Prices that high could push consumers into habits that slash their oil use—potentially for the long term—or trigger a recession that also hurts demand. They also would risk casting Saudi Arabia in the role of profiteer in a war it didn’t start.

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