Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, recently said again that OPEC will not take sole responsibility for supporting global oil prices. Since the collapse in oil prices this past year, OPEC has attempted to convince non-OPEC oil producers to cooperate on production and prices, but with little success.

“Today the situation is hard. We tried, we held meetings and we did not succeed because countries (outside OPEC) were insisting that OPEC carry the burden and we refuse that OPEC bears the responsibility,” Naimi said according to Reuters.

“The production of OPEC is 30 percent of the market, 70 percent from non-OPEC…everybody is supposed to participate if we want to improve prices.”

Interestingly, as the Saudi Arabian economy develops and diversifies, it appears the country’s swing producer power is waning. Saudi Arabia has a large petrochemical industry and is significantly expanding its refining capacity in order to become an exporter of higher-value products instead of just raw crude oil, according to the Baker Center’s Jim Krane.