Saudi Arabia’s wellhead crude production stands at 9.9 million b/d, with production capacity of 11.3 million b/d, the kingdom’s energy minister said Thursday. Following the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq crude processing facility and Khurais oil field on September 14 that took 5.7 million b/d of production capacity offline, the country maintained its supplies to customers by drawing from its crude inventories, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at an energy conference in Moscow.
“Now it is being stabilized as production,” he said, when asked if wellhead production was at 9.9 million b/d, as Saudi officials have said in recent days. “We are at [capacity of] 11.3 [million b/d], and by end of November, we’ll be back up and running [to full capacity].” However, he added: “I don’t want people to confuse that with a desire to produce 11.3 [million b/d].” Saudi Arabia typically holds a few million b/d of production capacity offline as spare capacity to be used during emergencies.