Saudi Arabia expects to restore its oil production capacity to 11 million barrels per day by the end of September and recover its full capacity to 12 million bbl/d two months later, the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said Sept. 17.
The world's biggest oil exporter has already restored more than half the oil production capacity damaged in the Sept. 14 attacks on two of its key oil facilities, the prince said in a press briefing.
On Sept. 14, the Abqaiq facility and the Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia were hit by attacks, which resulted in the suspension of 5.7 million bbl/d of the country's crude oil production.
Abqaiq is processing about 2 million bbl/d of crude, down from 4.9 million bbl/d before the attacks, Saudi Arabian Oil Co. CEO Amin Nasser told the briefing.
Aramco, as the oil giant is commonly known, said it planned to use its vast storage inventories to offset some of the losses.
The energy minister said Saudi Arabia's strategic oil stocks have already "helped us" in meeting output and export demands, but he gave no further detail on the use of stocks.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude exporter, pumped 9.77 million bbl/d in August, according to the latest S&P Global Platts survey of OPEC production.
The country held 187.9 million barrels of crude in storage as of June, according to the Joint Organizations Data Initiative. That implied that Saudi Arabia has 26.8 days of cover, assuming zero crude production and a steady export rate of 7 million bbl/d, which is what the country has exported in recent months.
Saudi Arabia holds crude in storage in domestic tanks and at sites in Egypt, Japan and the Netherlands.
Despite the oil attacks, Saudi Arabia still plans to go ahead with its long-delayed IPO for Aramco, with the sale of a 5% in the oil giant expected "any time" during the next 12 months, Nasser said.
Saudi Arabia's oil exports will be unaffected in September, so there will be no impact on Aramco's oil revenues, the energy minister said.
Robert Perkins is a reporter with S&P Global Platts. S&P Global Market Intelligence and S&P Global Platts are owned by S&P Global Inc.
