A Saudi billionaire and one of the world’s biggest investors has launched an extraordinary attack against his country’s oil price war.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal expressed his “astonishment” that Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, had played down the impact of prices falling below $100 a barrel.
Prince Alwaleed, a senior member of the ruling house of Saud and a leading investor in companies ranging from Citigroup to News Corp, publisher of The Times, said that the comments were a “catastrophe that cannot go unmentioned”.
In his open letter to Saudi ministers, posted on Twitter and first published in the Financial Times, he noted that 90 per cent of the country’s revenues come from oil.
The intervention comes as the International Energy Agency