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It's not that they are losing money on production, the state budget is in the red with a price less than about $80/bbl

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-economy-budget/saud...

Oil in most countries pays the producers and some subsidies to farmers, truckers, etc.

Oil in Saudi Arabia pays the entire country

$8.98 might be the breakeven price for Saudi Aramco, but for the country, the breakeven point is, iirc, $80/barrel

Not to mention they just had an IPO on their state oil company and raised a shot load of money.

I thought that had been called off no?

They wound up doing a limited sale to local investors. It has been suggested that there was some "influence" applied to the investors to put the price where it needed to be instead of at the purely market price.