Saudis signal quick production recovery following drone attacks: Can refineries follow suit?

Overnight attacks on the 14th of September directly impacted operations at Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais processing plants but the impact is also being felt further downstream. The attack shut in 5.7 million b/d of crude and around 700, 000 b/d of NGLs but also had ramifications for Saudi Arabia’s refinery operations. An encouraging outlook for the recovery trajectory for Saudi crude production emerged during the Tuesday 17 September press conference (Oil market lull as Saudis signal quick production recovery), suggesting refinery crude runs could increase in a similar fashion and reach pre-attack levels by year-end. In the shorter term, we expect crude runs to fall, overall product exports to decrease and some requirements to emerge for product imports. Saudi Arabia crude throughputs are expected to decrease by 1 million b/d in the short-term.