Saudi attack leads to biggest oil supply loss
An attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities has caused the biggest supply disruption in absolute terms in the last five decades, according to International Energy Agency figures.
Saturday's attack will cut the kingdom's output by 5.7 million barrels per day (bpd), according to a statement from state-run oil company Saudi Aramco. It is not yet known how long it will take to restart the production.
Before this, the biggest known disruption, of 5.6 million bpd, was prompted by the 1979 Iranian revolution. The chart shows the current loss against selected earlier disruptions, according to International Energy Agency figures.
In percentage terms, the Iranian loss was larger as 5.6 million bpd amounted to about 9 percent of world demand at that time, while the Saudi disruption amounts to over 5% of current oil consumption. (REUTERS Reporting by Alex Lawler Editing by David Evans)
Incidents at Abqaiq and Khurais
Saudi Aramco emergency crews contained fires at its plants in Abqaiq and Khurais, as a result of terrorist attacks with projectiles. These attacks resulted in production suspension of 5.7 million barrels of crude oil per day.
After visiting the incident locations, Amin H. Nasser, Saudi Aramco President & CEO, said: “We are gratified that there were no injuries. I would like to thank all teams that responded timely to the incidents and brought the situation under control. Work is underway to restore production and a progress update will be provided in around 48 hours.”
The company will release additional information as it becomes available.
Saudi Aramco may take months to resume normal output volumes
Saudi Aramco's full return to normal oil production volumes "may take months", two sources briefed on the company's operations said on Monday, after attacks on Saudi oil plants knocked out more than half of the country's output.
"It is still bad," one source said.
On Sunday, an industry source briefed on the developments told Reuters that Saudi Arabia's oil exports will continue as normal this week as the kingdom taps into stocks from its large storage facilities, but that Aramco may have to cut exports later if the outage in output continued for long.
(Reporting by Rania El Gamal and Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Ghaida Ghantous)
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