Our satellite readings indicate that Saudi Arabia authorities have made use of their storage to sustain the pace of exports in the current month.
In fact, our current forecast for the end of September points to a reduction of less than a million barrels a day. We expect this trend to continue for the next several months as restarting production will take sometime.
Key takeaways:
- Our satellite readings indicate a decrease of around 8 mln bbls in Saudi Arabia's domestic crude oil storage on 16th September, down from 73 mln bbls before the attacks.
- We observe a general misinterpretation on Saudi Arabian crude oil storage vs JODI data. Data from JODI shows that Saudi stocks are in the order of 180 mln bbls as of July 2019, much higher than the domestic stocks we observe. A potential explanation is that JODI includes also crude storage overseas and potentially also oil-in-transit.
- We also want to flag the possibility of Saudi Arabia tapping into their refined products SPR.
Photo by NASA
