London’s Financial Times says the kingdom’s government-owned oil company Saudi Aramco plans to more than double the number of drilling rigs operating by the end of the year to 70-plus. Latest OPEC data showed Saudi Aramco had only 34 drilling rigs operating last December.

“We have to have more rigs," Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Naimi said after the cartel’s January meeting.

"Without rigs we cannot find or develop new oil - we are serious about boosting our capacity.”

The Saudi government has on several recent occasions sought to ease high oil prices, saying it intends lifting production capacity by another two million barrels of oil per day (bopd) to 12.5 million bopd within the next five years, and possibly as high as 15 million bopd if strong demand persists.

But its investment in drilling rigs is the first concrete evidence that the kingdom, which produces over a quarter of the world’s oil, has identified a shift in the oil markets towards sustained higher prices.