Saudi oil production cut by 50% after drones attack crude facilities

[enhanced_deficit]

Neocons / GOP MAGA wing's top donor's Iran war wish getting close to becoming reality?

Last attack on Oil tanker was blamed on Iran and Iran at the time had called it Israeli mischief. Early reporting can be foggy, incomplete and even accurat but based on MSM reporting so far, there is no proof that this is an Lavon affair type Israel false flag to push war against Iran:


Saudi oil production cut by 50% after drones attack crude facilities

Published Sat, Sep 14 2019 10:33 AM EDT Updated 12 min ago

Key Points

• The closure will impact almost 5.7 million barrels of crude production a day, about 5% of the world’s daily oil production.
• Early Saturday, an oilfield operated by Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, was attacked by a number of drones.
• Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was one of their largest attacks ever inside the kingdom.
• But U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks.

Saudi Arabia shut down half its oil production Saturday after a series of drone strikes hit the world’s largest oil processing facility in an attack claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The closure will impact almost 5.7 million barrels of crude production a day, about 5% of the world’s daily oil production, according to Saudi Aramco.
Saudi Energy Minister Abdulaziz bin Salman said the attacks also led to a halt in gas production that will reduce the supply of ethane and natural gas liquids by 50%.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/14/saud...-wsj-says.html






Related

Oil could rise $10 per barrel after drone attack forces Saudi to cut output in half

Updated an hour ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/14/oil-...ut-output.html


Israel, Saudi Arabia To Preempt Dialogue Between Trump & Iran

Aug 28, 2019
The fears in Israel, which for now are only being expressed in completely off-the-record conversations, are that Trump, eager to make his mark on world affairs and prove he can achieve a better deal than his predecessor, will find himself in a room with negotiators much wilier and more knowledgeable on the issues than he is. Convinced that he is the grand master of the art of the deal, Trump could swiftly come to an agreement with the Iranians that may sound preferable to him, but in reality will be much worse.
Israel's intelligence and defense community are said to be strongly lobbying against such a renewed Trump engagement with Tehran after the president told reporters there's “a really good chance” the meeting would happen.
https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Mid...rump-Iran.html



Iranian lawmaker blames 'Israeli mischief' for tanker attacks off UAE coast




The Lavon Affair: How a false-flag operation led to war and the Israeli bomb
By Leonard Weiss, July 1, 2013

ISIS headquartered on Israel’s border, Israeli air support for Al Qaeda

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Officials Say Oil Production to Return to Normal Levels by Monday

[Stratovarious]

:toppingofftankatwalmart:

[Pauls' Revere]

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/graph...032416539.html

Spare capacity is the extra oil a producing country can bring onstream and sustain at short notice, providing global markets with a cushion in the event of natural disaster, conflict or any other cause of an unplanned supply outage.
Industry sources have said Saudi Arabia will be able to restore supply within days. A prolonged supply outage will have a major bullish impact on oil prices, which in turn will spur further gains in U.S. shale production.
The United States has briefly overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world largest crude exporter this year, only a few years after removing a ban on oil exports because of large needs at home as the world's largest oil consumer.

[enhanced_deficit]

Trump says U.S. ‘locked and loaded’ after attack on Saudi oil

[angelatc]

Trump says U.S. ‘locked and loaded’ after attack on Saudi oil

Justin Amash gets right to the point: https://twitter.com/justinamash/stat...08896406425600

With Trump, there is always an old tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...98852933013504

Of course, it's quite possible that his family WILL make an absolute fortune off this, so perhaps it's not so ironic after all.

[Swordsmyth]

And there it is, moments before oil markets open: upon the US release of declassified satellite images showing precision strikes on critical spheroids at the world's largest oil processing facility at Abqaiq one market analyst alarmingly writes,

"We think this is a months fix, not days/weeks. Oil going up even higher."

This after reports just before the satellite photos were released commonly said a minimum of "weeks" would pass before full Saudi Aramco production capacity comes back online.
They appear to show approximately 17 points of impact on key infrastructure at the site after Yemeni Houthis claimed a successful drone strike of up to ten unmanned aerial vehicles with explosives.

However, US and Saudi officials, still amid an ongoing investigation, have told reporters they are "certain" the attack actually originated from Iraq, especially as the debris and precision targeting show a level of "sophistication" which would link it to Iran's elite IRGC.
Dan Tsubouchi, chief market strategist at Calgary-based SAF Group, is predicting a fix that will take months based on the extent of the damage revealed in the new images, driving up oil to prices beyond the initial possibly short-sighted predictions this weekend.

According to Fox News:

The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in August had identified that region as the plant's stabilization area. That zone included "storage tanks and processing and compressor trains — which greatly increases the likelihood of a strike successfully disrupting or destroying its operations," the center wrote at the time.

Niether Riyadh officials nor the state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco have yet to confirm the extent of the damage, but have only made assurances they will tap its global reserves network.

Aramco's president and CEO Amin Nasser announced Sunday, “Work is underway to restore production and a progress update will be provided in around 48 hours.”


https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/dec...i-oil-facility

[Swordsmyth]

Here are a dozen things everyone should know about the past weekend’s strikes on a major Saudi oil refinery, and the likely fallout from them:

• The Houthis, a rebel army fighting against Saudi-led interests in Yemen, claimed credit for launching the attacks on Saturday. However, the U.S. government now says it believes the assault was launched from Iran, and that it may have involved cruise missiles rather than drones.
• The strikes centered on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq refinery. Abqaiq is the world’s largest oil refinery, processing about two-thirds of the total Saudi supply each day. Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-largest producer of crude oil behind the United States.
• Several large Saudi oil fields were also attacked. Those attacks, along with the disruption of the Abqaiq refinery required the Saudi government to shut-in about half of its current production, or about 5.7 million barrels of oil per day.
• According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), that amounts to the single biggest sudden disruption on record, more than the loss of Kuwaiti and Iraqi supply during the Gulf War in August 1990, and the 1979 decrease in Iranian output following the Islamic Revolution.
• Crude prices spiked 10% in early Monday trading, and could rise further if the supply disruption lingers beyond a few days.
• Saudi Arabia reportedly has enough crude reserves in storage to make up for the loss of production in the short term, according to Vima Jayabalan, an energy research director with Wood Mackenzie. "Saudi Arabia has enough reserves to cover the shortfall over the next week but, if the outage extends, then filling the gap with the right type of crude quality could be a challenge."
• That question of crude quality is key, since the Kingdom is a large supplier to a variety of countries, all of which have their own preference for the quality and gravity of oil they import. Saudi Arabia currently supplies roughly 6% of U.S. crude imports, per the EIA, but supplies even larger volumes to China, Japan, India and South Korea. Matching up the crude quality and quantity to each customer is a complex endeavor.
• Saudi pre-staging of crude in storage in key points around the world may also reduce actual impacts to crude supplies. As Jesse Mercer, Senior Direct of Crude Analytics for Enverus notes, “Saudi Aramco’s pre-staging of these barrels in Egypt, Rotterdam, and Okinawa will mean the timing of deliveries may not be immediately affected either. Due to this inventory cushion, Saudi Aramco customers are not likely to see their volumes impacted if the disruption is short-lived.”
• But a longer-term outage is a different story. Mercer further notes, “But if the damages at Abqaiq and Hijra Khurais prove to be especially severe, then the world oil market is going to need another supply buffer to fall back on until repairs can be completed.”
• Don’t expect that international supply buffer to come from the United States. Although President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday that he has “...authorized the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if needed, in a to-be-determined amount sufficient to keep the markets well-supplied,” releasing major volumes of oil from the SPR is not a matter of simply turning on a spigot. Doing that is a highly-complex process requiring all manner of infrastructure and logistical considerations. Plus, you would again run into the issues of trying to match up crude qualities and quantities to specific customers.

More at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbl.../#6b9711bd49d8

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Arabia has shut down its 230,000 bpd pipeline carrying Arab Light crude to Bahrain, after this weekend’s attacks took 5.7 million bpd of Saudi oil production—mostly light grades—offline, Reuters reported on Monday, quoting two trade sources.

The pipeline with a capacity to ship between 220,000 bpd and 230,000 bpd of Arab Light crude oil from Aramco to Bahrain’s oil company Bapco was closed after the attacks crippled the production of mostly light grades in Saudi Arabia, one of Reuters’ sources said.


On Saturday, the Abqaiq facility and the Khurais oil field in Saudi Arabia were hit by attacks, which resulted in the suspension of more than half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production. The onshore Khurais oil field has the capacity to produce 1.2 million bpd of Arab Light, according to EIA estimates. The Abqaiq facility, for its part, is considered to be the most important oil processing plant in the world. The facility processes crude oil from the major Saudi oil fields Ghawar, Shaybah, and Khurais.
All those three fields produce Arab Light or Arab Extra Light. Ghawar has the capacity to pump 5.8 million bpd of Arab Light, while Shaybah has a capacity of 1 million bpd of Arab Extra Light, according to EIA estimates based on data from Saudi Aramco, Arab Oil and Gas Journal, and IHS Markit.
While the Saudis closed the oil pipeline to Bahrain, the Bahraini company Bapco is scrambling to secure tankers to ship some 2 million barrels of crude oil from Saudi Arabia, the trade sources told Reuters.
Bapco has shut down a crude distillation unit at the Sitrah refinery, while another crude distillation unit, a vacuum distillation unit, and a visbreaker unit have reduced their run rates to 45 percent, Reuters reported, citing an alert to clients sent by research company IIR.

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...r-Attacks.html

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Arabia’s disrupted oil production may last longer than originally thought, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd., told Bloomberg on Monday, with full resumption of oil production perhaps not returning for weeks—or even months.

Saudi Arabia, too, is holding a more reserved position that initially thought, believing now that less than half the capacity at the Abqaiq processing plant can be restored quickly, according to Bloomberg sources that spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the longer lead-time items of the restoration are Abqaiq’s stabilization towers that separates out the dissolved gas from the crude oil—a distillation process that sweetens sour crude, if you will.


Just the specialized parts to repair those towers could take months to get. Five out of the 18 stabilization towards were hit, indicating a “very specific, accurate targeting of those particular infrastructures,” Phillip Cornell, former senior corporate planning adviser to Aramco, cited by Bloomberg.
Abqaiq has a capacity of 5.7 million barrels per day of light crude.
To compensate, Aramco is bringing back online previously shuttered oilfields, and it is drawing on its oil reserves to cushion the blow. What can’t be compensated for by cranking up idled fields and siphoning off crude reserves is being satisfied by substituting a heavier grade oil—but all these emergency measures have limits.
Saudi Arabia’s stockpiles are only sufficient enough to last 26 days, according to Rystad Energy, so if the outage were to last “months” rather than days or weeks, customers may actually feel the supply crunch.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...s-Analyst.html

[enhanced_deficit]

Justin Amash gets right to the point: https://twitter.com/justinamash/stat...08896406425600

Part of the problem could be Amash is anti-neoconservatives and MAGA's top donor is a neoconservative. Hopefully GOP_Adelson leadership would follow Amash's advice on this and won't take orders from foreign-firster entities and lobbies.

With Trump, there is always an old tweet: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...98852933013504

Wow, that is very informative.

[RicoCabeza]

CHINA WARNS TRUMP NOT TO BELIEVE WARHAWK “CONSPIRACY THEORIES” THAT IRAN WAS BEHIND ATTACK ON SAUDI ARABIA
- https://www.blacklistednews.com/arti...-on-saudi.html

Game-Changer!? Looks like Saudi Oil Field Attack was an “Inside Job”! Yup, another Saudi Arabia False Flag one day after Top Banksters announce IPO of AramCo (Saudi’s National Oil Co.)
- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/...-oil-co-busted

The evidence shows that the Saudi’s themselves set fire to 4 large storages tanks in a manner that makes them easily repairable presumably to start a war with Iran to benefit themselves and evil Israel. Jim Stone calls it – “THERE WERE NO DRONES AND NO MISSILES USED AGAINST SAUDI REFINERY”
- http://82.221.129.208

Any escalation towards war with Iran between now and October 31 (which we are seeing weekly, including in the proxy war between USA/Israel and Iran in Yemen) substantiates further the following claims that will IMMEDIATELY follow an October attack on Iran:

Nuclear Strikes Within USA Coming – Zionist Timeline Leaked
- https://beforeitsnews.com/v3/new-wor...2019/8453.html

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco has told PetroChina that some loadings of light crude oil for October would be delayed up by to around 10 days, after the attacks on critical Saudi oil infrastructure this weekend, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a senior Chinese state oil source familiar with the issue.
Aramco, however, will supply the same volumes and grades to PetroChina in October as requested by the Chinese state oil firm. In the loadings for September, Aramco will replace some light crude oil volumes with heavier oil grades without delays in deliveries or changes in the volumes as per contract, the source told Reuters.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...r-Attacks.html

[enhanced_deficit]

Saudi Oilfield Attack: By Yemen, Iraq, Or Iran? Israel?

Mike Shedlock
Sep 16, 2019

Three Birds With One Strike
Israel certainly has the most to gain from this. Three birds with one strike:

1. Saudi Oil Production Hit
2. Iran Blamed
3. Weapons to Saudi Arabia to Fight Yemen

I do not rule out anything, including an attack from or sponsored by Israel, Iran, Iraq, or Yemen.
I do not suggest Israel did this, only that Israel had the most to gain regardless of who is directly responsible.

https://finance.townhall.com/columni...srael-n2553148




Related
Tulsi slams Trump as 'Saudi Arabia's b----' , 'We are not your prostitutes. You are not our pimp'

[Swordsmyth]

Chevron could restart oil production from the so-called partitioned zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait “relatively quickly”, chief executive Michael Wirth told CNBC in an interview.

Chevron has an agreement with Saudi Arabia to produce oil from the fields in the partitioned zone on its behalf. However, a territorial dispute between the Kingdom and Kuwait put production of oil there on hold four years ago.
Previously, two fields in the partitioned zone—Khafji and Wafra—pumped half a million barrels daily. Operational differences and a worsening in bilateral relations led to the suspension of production in 2015. Last year, there was talk about restarting joint production after the United States called on its Gulf allies to increase production to keep rising oil prices from going too high.

At the time, sources told Reuters Saudi Arabia had wanted more control over the joint oil production operations in the zone and the Kuwaitis had been unwilling to accept that.
Now, following the Saturday attacks on a Saudi oil field and a processing plant with a capacity of 5 million bpd, talk about joint production in the PZ is once again on the table.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...y-Quickly.html

[Swordsmyth]

If you think they can be believed:


Saudi Arabia’s energy minister held a highly-anticipated press conference on Tuesday, updating the world on the damage at Abqaiq. He struck a confident tone, stating that half of the disrupted output is already back online and that repair work would be completed by the end of the month. In the meantime, the country would use inventories to keep export flows continuing as usual.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oi...Predicted.html

[Pauls' Revere]

Don't know about anyone else but I got an uneasy feeling, like something is brewing and I'm not sure what. Considering that 50% of Saudi Arabia's oil production was knocked offline costing gawd knows how much in lost dollars and repairs.

The lack of response from the Saudi's, the US, and even NATO is worrisome. I'm happy that nobody has jumped into a new war but I just can't imagine any country taking it on the chin like that (or getting kicked in the nuts) and letting it all slide like nothing happened.

I feel as though there's a piece of this puzzle missing. What are the Saudi's waiting for?

[Swordsmyth]

Don't know about anyone else but I got an uneasy feeling, like something is brewing and I'm not sure what. Considering that 50% of Saudi Arabia's oil production was knocked offline costing gawd knows how much in lost dollars and repairs.

The lack of response from the Saudi's, the US, and even NATO is worrisome. I'm happy that nobody has jumped into a new war but I just can't imagine any country taking it on the chin like that (or getting kicked in the nuts) and letting it all slide like nothing happened.

I feel as though there's a piece of this puzzle missing. What are the Saudi's waiting for?

IF (and that's a BIG if) the Saudis are telling the truth about getting their flow going again soon then the odds are it was an inside job to raise oil prices.
In that case I don't see them inviting real destruction by starting a war.

If they are lying and the damage takes a long time to fix then they may not want a war that would destroy them completely.


Either way I hope there will be no war and Trump will keep us out if the Saudis do retaliate somehow.

If the Saudis do retaliate then they would be wise to do so clandestinely.

[UWDude]

Anybody elses hate boner for the Sauds still hard?

Gotta be real, though, it makes my love for the Houthi feel more real, although I try not to get emotionally attached to them, as their war really has no good or bad guys, IMHO.

[Swordsmyth]

Anybody elses hate boner for the Sauds still hard?

Gotta be real, though, it makes my love for the Houthi feel more real, although I try not to get emotionally attached to them, as their war really has no good or bad guys, IMHO.

They are near the top of my list, I can't wait for my thread counting down to their collapse is complete.

[Pauls' Revere]

I think I'm going to turn on the radio and hear about a massive cyber attack on Iran that mysteriously cannot be traced.

[UWDude]

I think I'm going to turn on the radio and hear about a massive cyber attack on Iran that mysteriously cannot be traced.

MSM says Israel's elections are going to be cyber attacked, according to sources familiar with the terrorists' thinking.

[Pauls' Revere]

MSM says Israel's elections are going to be cyber attacked, according to sources familiar with the terrorists' thinking.

Wait and see. If they are and right after this Aramco site geez.

[UWDude]

Wait and see. If they are and right after this Aramco site geez.

If the Houthis pulled off some $#@! like that, I'd want to marry them and have their babies.

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Aramco has offered Indian Oil Corp Arab Heavy crude oil instead of Arab Light following an attack on its oil facilities over the weekend, an industry source told Reuters on Tuesday.IOC will receive full allocated volumes from Saudi Aramco in September and October, the source said, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak with the media.

However Aramco has said they would give some volumes of Arab heavy instead of Arab mix oil, the source added. This indicates that Saudi is offering heavy grade instead of light as Arab Mix is a combination of Arab light and heavy.
No immediate comment was available from IOC.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/saudi...074828569.html

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Arabia has approached Baghdad with a request to buy crude oil from OPEC’s number-two to compensate for its production outage caused by the Saturday attacks, sources who declined to be named told S&P Global Platts.
According to one of the sources, Aramco had asked Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization, or SOMO, for some 10 million barrels of Basra Light, to load in October and November.


Saudi Arabia’s crude oil in storage was about 180 million barrels in July, which would have been enough to cover exports at the rate of 6.88 million bpd for a period of almost a month.
Now, the S&P Global Platts sources say Riyadh is also planning to use some of the oil it had allocated for domestic consumption to fulfill its export obligations. Iraq, in the meantime, has yet to respond to the request as it has its own export orders to fill.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...q-For-Oil.html

[Swordsmyth]

The attacks on Saudi soil with drones and ballistic missiles will stop, the Houthis have vowed, if Saudi Arabia will stop its airstrikes over Yemen, according to Bloomberg, who quoted Yemen Shiite Houthi rebel leader Mahdi al-Mashat, who spoke on Al Masirah TV.

The Iran-backed Houthis have claimed ownership of the devastating attacks that crippled Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure over the weekend that took offline 5.7 million barrels per day—which is half of Saudi Arabia’s total oil production--sending oil prices sharply upward.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...n-In-Yeme.html

[Swordsmyth]

Much of the attention concerning the crippling damage to Saudi Aramco facilities struck in last week's aerial attack ultimately blamed on "Iranian sponsorship" by US and Saudi officials has focused on Abqaiq processing plant, but on Friday the first on the ground images from the kingdom's giant Khurais oil field — the country's second largest — have been revealed, showing scorched infrastructure, ruptured pipelines, and "a mess of oil melted to asphalt, twisted and charred metal grates" according to an on site Bloomberg report.


And yet Aramco has remained insistent that the field will return to pre-attack output levels this month, after the company reported losing half its daily output in the aftermath of the early Saturday attacks, impacting a whopping 5% of total global supply.

Per Bloomberg, Khurais has a capacity of 1.45 million barrels a day, processing all oil on site; however the attack took out four 300-foot towers essential to the production process.

Like at the Abqaiq processing plant nearer the coast, the strikes — whether by drones or ballistic missiles (debris showed by the Saudi Defense Ministry this week featured both) — appeared remarkably precise.
The Saudis have counted a total of twenty-five drones and missiles used in the twin attacks, after statements by Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed ten drones were used.

CNBC: RT @CNBCi: Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil facility, was attacked in 18 different locations on Saturday, CNBC's @_HadleyGamble is on the ground at Saudi Aramco's facilities. https://t.co/vcgOhkE03m pic.twitter.com/qEJd6QZOtz
— Paul M Smith BA Hons (@paulmsmith1975) September 20, 2019

Bloomberg reports of the recovery progress at Khurais:

The Khurais field and processing plant resumed 30% of production within 24 hours of the strike and will produce 1.2 million barrels a day by the end of September, Fahad Al Abdulkareem, general manager for Aramco’s southern area oil operations, said at a briefing on Friday. Workers are at the site 24 hours a day to speed the repairs, according to the company.

The precision nature of the strikes, which Washington has claimed can only point to Iranian involvement given the level of sophistication needed to conduct such an operation, is even more evident at the Abqaiq facility.

Images released via the #Saudi Press Agency from the Defense Ministry briefing earlier show the first images of up close damage from the #Abqaiq #Aramco attack. pic.twitter.com/CLFQ7Pfh1A
— Aurora Intel (@AuroraIntel) September 18, 2019

Given the sheer distance the drones would have to travel, whether from Yemen or possibly Iran, combined with 18 precision strikes on the 70-year old but state of the art Abqaiq facility, a number of analysts are questioning whether the operation had inside the kingdom help.

Bill Blain of Shard Capital is one of them, who notes "a number of my sources suggest things look increasingly questionable in the desert kingdom."
Blain comments:

Looking at the photos of the Houthi drone strikes, the damage and the holes made in the gas tanks look suspiciously regular and well placed. MBS’s shakedown of his royal cousins and the nation’s business leaders stands alongside rising revulsion at his own spending. As defacto absolute ruler he feels above question, but domestic tensions are rising. More than a few analysts suspect the Houthis may have had inside assistance for a growing Saudi domestic insurgency.

"Trump and Kushner are going to struggle with that one.." he concluded.

Indeed, considering the kingdom's historically restive Shia community in the eastern part of the country would also avail itself to help any operation intent on striking sensitive state facilities, the possibilities are endless.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/fir...field-revealed

[Pauls' Revere]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...tacks-n1057216

Sept. 20, 2019, 4:50 PM PDT / Updated Sept. 20, 2019, 6:59 PM PDT
By Mosheh Gains and Dennis Romero
The United States is deploying military forces to the Middle East after Saturday's drone attacks on major oil sites in Saudi Arabia that the administration of President Donald Trump has blamed on Iran.
"The president has approved the deployment of U.S. forces which will be defensive in nature and primarily focused on air and missile defense," U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said at a news conference Friday.

Answering reporters' questions about the deployment, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the troop deployment as "modest" and "not thousands."
Dunford said he planned to confer with U.S. Central Command and Saudi officials to work out details of the deployment, which he said would be announced next week.

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi state oil firm Aramco has told Japanese refiner JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy about a possible change in shipment, raising concern about the kingdom's ability to supply crude oil a week after attacks on its refineries, the Nikkei Asian Review reported.Aramco did not specify a reason for the change in oil grade supplied to Japan's biggest refiner from light to heavy and medium starting October, Nikkei said https://s.nikkei.com/2kVAbFR, citing JXTG officials.
JXTG officials suspect that Aramco is taking more time than expected to fix its desulfurization facility, which is necessary to produce light-grade crude used in the production of gasoline and light gas oil, the newspaper said.
At least three supertankers that loaded crude in Saudi Arabia this week for China and India had their crude grades switched from light to heavy oil while more buyers in Asia have been asked to delay shipments and switch grades in September and October, Reuters reported, citing sources and data from Refinitiv and Kpler.

More at: https://news.yahoo.com/saudi-arabia-...031202120.html