Will Middle East Tensions Prompt Saudi Arabia To Shift Its Oil Policy?

At the beginning of October, Saudi Arabia affirmed it would keep its voluntary oil production cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd) until the end of the year and was in talks with the United States, which was brokering a deal on the normalization of Saudi-Israel relations. But the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli retaliation targeting Gaza upended, once again, the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East—the world's top crude oil exporting region where the biggest oil transit choke point is located. Saudi Arabia's…