Saudi Arabia’s ‘prickly prince’ of oil bristles as crude price slides

Saudi Arabia’s ‘prickly prince’ of oil bristles as crude price slides

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman spent almost two decades as a relatively low-profile member of Saudi Arabia’s Opec delegation. But since becoming the first royal to serve as the kingdom’s oil minister in 2019, he has made a name for himself, though not one of his choosing: traders have recently taken to calling him the “prickly prince”.

From starting oil price wars with Russia in 2020 to contributing to strained US-Saudi relations last year, Prince Abdulaziz has been an assertive steward of the kingdom’s oil policy, but one beset by a thin-skinned tendency to react to slights.

To supporters, he is a symbol of a more confident Saudi Arabia under the de facto leadership of his half-brother, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. They believe Prince Abdulaziz has got many of the big market calls right, reinforcing Saudi influence over the oil market and its Opec+ alliance with Moscow, which has endured despite Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

To the prince’s detractors, however, he has a tendency to overplay his hand and pick unnecessary fights that make his central role of managing the oil price, on which the kingdom’s economic hopes rest, more challenging.

The latest forceful move came this week when a swath of journalists,