The 600,000 barrels per day Port Arthur refinery has exclusively processed Saudi Arabian crude since 1988, when Saudi Aramco first bought a stake in the facility—the largest of its kind in the United States. But Riyadh’s new strategy of constricting exports to the United States, along with several Asian countries, has reduced supplies to Motiva and several other refineries across the country. “The drop is huge,” said Amrita Sen of Energy Aspects in London. “It’s not just that Saudi exports are low, but they have been low for several months.” For months, the KSA has schemed to reduce the size of global inventories, which would spur the world’s major oil consumers to purchase more fuel, thus ending three years of a stubborn oil glut. The latest Brent barrel prices have hovered in the $62 range, which is a less than $10 jump from the January 2017 rate. At the […]