Loading ...Saudi Arabia’s national oil company expects to restore roughly a third of crude output disrupted in a weekend attack by day’s end Monday, Saudi officials said, but the strikes will likely leave the country short of full production capacity for weeks.
The damage from Saturday’s attacks risks sending shock waves through energy markets and damaging the kingdom’s long held position as the world’s most predictable and prodigious supplier of crude. Officials had earlier expressed hope that Saudi Arabia could resume full production by the start of the week.
The strikes knocked out 5.7 million barrels of daily production, and the officials said they still believe they can fully replace it in coming days. That would require tapping oil inventories and using other facilities to process crude. One of the main targets of the attackwas a large crude-processing plant in Abqaiq.
“We should be able to have 2 million barrels a day back online…by tomorrow,” said one person familiar with the matter.