Saudi Arabia, as part of an agreement reached between OPEC members and Russia, has limited its oil production over the past few months, the move’s objective being to support crude prices, reduce international oil reserves and ultimately bolster oil producer revenues.

The national budgets of major oil producing countries, heavily reliant on oil revenues, have been negatively impacted as a result of low oil prices supressed by an oversupply in the market.

It is believed that Saudi Arabia and fellow OPEC members are striving to boost oil prices up to a level of as much as around 60 dollars. If this level is exceeded, US shale production promises to benefit at the cost of OPEC members, whose global oil market share would consequently contract.

Saudi Aramco, the state-owned Saudi Arabian national petroleum and natural gas company, is pushing for an international oil market share of 5 percent by 2018 and earnings of as much as 100 billion dollars.

The country plans to invest its additional earnings in the development of ambitious projects aiming to greatly reduce and eventually eliminate Saudi Arabia’s hydrocarbon dependence.

Saudi Aramco’s market value is currently estimated at close to 2 trillion dollars, equal to that of Google and twice the market value of Apple.