Saudi Aramco has restored Saudi Arabia’s oil production capacity to 11.3 million bpd—the level before the attacks on oil facilities ten days ago, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing three sources with knowledge of the Kingdom’s oil company’s operations.
Separately, people familiar with the situation at Aramco told Bloomberg on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia is recovering from the September 14 attacks faster than expected—about a week faster than Saudi officials have given as a date to recover the full capacity, the end of September.
The attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure on September 14 knocked 5.7 million bpd—or 5 percent of global oil supply—offline. The market initially panicked, with prices jumping the most on record last Monday, until Saudi Arabia started to insist through official statements and sources that it would fully restore oil supply by the end of September.
Despite continued reports that the Saudis would struggle to restore oil supply by the end of this month as they had promised and that repairs would likely take months rather than weeks, a source told Reuters on Monday that the Kingdom would fully restore by early next week the oil production lost in the attacks.
As of Monday, Saudi Arabia was said to have restored 75 percent of the production lost in the attacks. Output at the Khurais oil field was more than 1.3 million bpd as of Monday, while production from Abqaiq stood at around 3 million bpd.
According Reuters’ sources today, production at the Abqaiq plant is around 4.9 million bpd now.
Reports of the Saudis restoring capacity faster than indicated combined with renewed fears that a protracted U.S.-China trade war would further dent oil demand and with a surprise crude oil inventory build estimated by the API to weigh down on oil prices early on Wednesday. As of 07:07 a.m. EDT, WTI Crude was down 1.38 percent at $56.50, while Brent Crude was trading down 1.46 percent at $61.21.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Reuters quoting an unnamed sources claimed that the Khurais oilfield is now back to full production at 1.3 million barrels a day (mbd) of light oil as of last Monday at a time when Saudi Aramco has been telling its customers that some lighter grades would likely be replaced with heavier crude grades.
Moreover, Wall Street Journal reported two days ago that it was informed by contractors and fabricators that repairs to Saudi Aramco infrastructure is going to take months rather than weeks as the Saudis are suggesting. It also reported that Saudi Aramco was offering to pay a premium for speedy repairs.
Dr Mamdouh G Salameh
International Oil Economist
Visiting Professor of Energy Economics at ESCP Europe Business School, London