Saudi response to Aramco missile attack ‘best in world’
No country in the world could have reacted as effectively as Saudi Arabia did to the attack last month on its vital oil infrastructure, the Kingdom’s Energy Minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman said on Thursday.
“Where in the world would you have a country, a people and a nation who could overcome that challenge, which has never been seen anywhere in the world?” the minister told oil industry leaders at the Russian Energy Week forum in Moscow.
The Abqaiq processing plant and Khurais oilfield in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province were hit by drone and missile strikes on Sept. 14, widely attributed to Iran, that knocked out 50 percent of Saudi oil production and 5 percent of the world’s oil supply.
Arab News visited Abqaiq last week, and reported that young Saudi engineers working with Saudi Aramco veterans had come up with innovative solutions to repair the damaged infrastructure in a fraction of the time it had been expected to take.
“In 72 hours, we first of all regained our capabilities, and retained our reputation, and more or less we assumed our responsibility to attend to our major job, which specifically was to continue to be the most reliable, secure, dependable oil supplier,” Prince Abdul Aziz said on Thursday. Saudi Arabia had stabilized production capacity at 11.3 million barrels per day (bpd), the minister said, and made an “additional commitment” to volunteer to keep production lower than the 10.3 million bpd agreed under the OPEC-plus agreement on oil supply. “We still have the kit and the tools to overcome any future challenges to the OPEC-plus deal,” he said.