As swing producer/price setter, they call the tune. But what they say publicly isn’t always what they do privately. I had thought they may be holding Brent at 120 and letting WTI converge to it as the new pipeline scheduled to begin May 15 worked to equalize prices. But it’s certainly possible they could converge at a lower price, if the Saudis so choose.

Oil a ‘Little Bit High,’ Saudi Arabia’s Al-Naimi Says

By Jacob Adelman and Yuji Okada

May 8 (Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia is storing as much as 80 million barrels of crude to boost supplies amid international prices that are “still a little bit high,” according to the country’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi.

The nation, the world’s largest oil exporter, has set aside supplies “on shore in Saudi Arabia, in pipelines, in tanks,” al-Naimi said in Tokyo today before board meetings of state- owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co., of which he is chairman.