Saudi Arabia, which is synonymous with huge oil reserves, surprisingly gives signals that probably the end of oversupply, that led to the collapse of raw material prices since mid-2014, is coming, writes Bloomberg. While maintaining record levels of production, stocks of oil in the kingdom declined for the sixth consecutive month. This is the longest period of decline for 15 years.

Market analysts take this as a signal that the end of the oil glut is nearing

“The drop in Saudi crude stocks signals the rebalancing has started. Crude stocks are coming off in places where either the data is opaque or the market isn’t paying as much attention,” said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consulting firm Energy Aspects.

The merchants in oil markets focused their attention mainly on stocks in the US and to a lesser extent in Europe and Japan, so the drop in Saudi Arabia remained almost unnoticed and poorly commented. Since October stocks of the kingdom fell by 38.6 million barrels, as the country has been delivering the markets greater amounts than it produces. For the same period stocks in the US rose by 61%.

“Saudi Arabia cannot continue to draw down stocks forever,” said Olivier Jakob at consulting firm Petromatrix GmbH in Switzerland. He pointed that amid this decline Riyadh “will contribute to the rebalancing” of the market in the second half of this year and in 2017. Earlier this month, the new energy minister of the kingdom Khalid al-Falih also expressed the opinion that the market is coming out of the state of oversupply.

“The worst is clearly behind us. We see a balanced market, we see supply and demand converging. We may have started inventory drawdowns that will continue for the foreseeable future,” said Falih during the last meeting of OPEC in early June.