Special to WorldTribune.com

Saudi Arabia is intent on drowning its competition in a sea of cheap oil.

“There have been no conversations here that say we should cut production now that we’ve seen the pain,” Saudi Aramco Chairman Khalid al-Falih told the Financial Times.

“The only thing to do now is to let the market do its job.”

“The pain” is being felt in Saudi Arabia, which recently had its sovereign credit rating cut, but Riyadh’s strategy is to continue producing oil to keep prices low and push states who need the price of crude high, such as Russia, out of the market.

Since OPEC decided last year it would not cut production levels, the price of crude sunk from around $100 per barrel to less than $50 per barrel.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said the policy is “a defense of high efficiency producing countries, not only of market share. We want to tell the world that high efficiency producing countries are the ones that deserve market share. That is the operative principle in all capitalist countries.”

Saudi Arabia’s pain in 2015 is getting worse. The kingdom is expected to see a budget deficit equal to 16 percent of GDP.

“We knew that it was going to be painful but the extent of the pain went beyond our expectations,” Falih told the Financial Times. “The market has overreacted as it typically does in such down-cycles.”

  Ali Al Naimi, Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Aramco, Saudi strategy: Keep pumping oil through ‘the pain’, WorldTribune.com