Saudi oil production back to pre-attack levels: Minister

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – Saudi Arabia has restored its oil production to levels seen before the attacks on its key oil installations, the Kingdom’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman said at the third day of Russia Energy Week in Moscow on Thursday (Oct 3).

“We are even beyond 9.9 million barrels per day (bpd) of stabilized production capacity. We are at 11.3 million barrels per day and as we have said before by end of November we will be back up and running,” Prince Abdulaziz said, Saudi Gazette reported as quoted by Indonesia Window here, Friday.

The attacks on Saudi Aramco’s key oil-processing facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais on September 14, 2019 had temporarily interrupted the supply of an estimated 5.7 million barrels of crude oil per day, or  around five percent of global supply, and two billion cubic feet of gas.

The US Energy Information Administration estimates that Saudi Arabia was producing 9.9 million bpd of crude oil in August.

“By our agreement with OPEC+ we should have been producing 10.3 million barrels per day, we elected to voluntarily cut our oil production to lower level than that,” he added.

OPEC and allied producers led by Russia, a group known as OPEC+, agreed last year to cut oil supply by 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) to support prices. The cuts came into effect on Jan. 1.

“I want to move on… we in the energy industry in Saudi Arabia, we have got a few challenges, we have got an IPO and we want to make sure it’s a successful IPO,” Prince Abdulaziz said.

Energy leaders from across the world have convened in Moscow for a week to discuss matters ranging from the global energy outlook to challenges in the development of renewable energy.

Reporting by Indonesia Window