Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 16-09-2019
The strike on the heartland of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including damage to the world’s biggest petroleum-processing facility, has driven oil prices to their highest level in nearly four months.
Reuters reports the attack on Saudi oil facilities on Saturday not only knocked out over half of the country’s production, it also removed almost all the spare capacity available to compensate for any major disruption in oil supplies worldwide.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for Saturday’s assault on Abqaiq – the world’s largest oil processing plant – and the Khurais oilfield. The pre-dawn strikes knocked out more than half of crude output from the world’s top exporter.
The state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco says it lost six million barrels of oil – which would affect six percent of the world’s oil output.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran, saying it “has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply”.
Iran has dismissed the accusations by the United States that Tehran was behind drone attacks.
The kingdom has for years been the only major oil producing country that has kept significant spare capacity that it could start up quickly to compensate for any deficiency in supply caused by war or natural disaster.
Most other countries cannot afford to drill expensive wells and install infrastructure, then maintain it idle.
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