The Wall Street Journal reports that Saudi Oil Refineries could take months to repair according to foreign contractors working with the Saudi state giant. Saudi Arabia state oil company Aramco had initially said repairs would take a few days. This was later changed to repairs would take ten weeks tops.
Bloomberg estimated Saudi Arabia has about 50 million barrels of oil in storage at home plus another 80 million barrels stored abroad. This would be enough to meet the shortfall in Saudi Arabia supply commitments for about 20-30 days.
SOURCES – Oilprice, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
This was the worst possible action Iran could’ve done! Very rarely in history does an attack create peace or relief to current burdens, all this does is accelerate US resolve and justify their involvement in the Middle East. Not to mention they are going to now invest heavily in air defenses to ensure and attack of this scale doesn’t happen again. Such an unnecessary escalation of something that could’ve been prevented with Iran using diplomacy. Hopefully the Iranian hardliners are silenced so the more cool-headed people can actually prevent further conflict.
The USA is now the swing producer, and Saudi Arabia was already cutting production due to OPEC agreements. So once they fix things, the idea the oil market has is they can easily refill storage. And even if they cannot, other OPEC producers can pump more in the short term due to their cuts.
I can’t think of any example in history where being attacked convinced someone to be less warlike.
Being thoroughly crushed and forced to reorganise into a less militaristic fashion sometimes works (see Japan, Germany, Scotland).
That’ll teach the warmongering so-and-sos.
Wait til the reserves dry up in smaller countries.
Back in the nineties, there were many pot boiling techno thrillers that started with the world’s oil supply (IE Saudi Arabia) being disrupted. Maybe we live in less interesting times after all.
A rise in oil prices due to shortages is the best thing that could happen to renewable sources. Even better if the insurance premium rises permanently. Go, Go Green Iran!
This is part of their sour heavy crude system for upgrading to light/sweet crude. Which is not so simple, as a the Venezulans have discovered. The fact that Aramco, a company that can literally throw money at the problem, can’t fix quickly, shows that some pretty hard to replace/critical components got hit. Naturally bespoke to the refinery as well.