Trump authorizes SPR release after Saudi attacks

US president Donald Trump said today he has authorized a release of US emergency oil stocks following the 14 September incident that cut Saudi output by 5.7mn b/d.

"Based on the attack on Saudi Arabia, which may have an impact on oil prices, I have 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," Trump said via Twitter. US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) stocks stand at 630mn bl.

A return to full crude production capacity in Saudi Arabia following yesterday's drone attacks on two key oil installations could take up to six months, a source familiar with the damage at the two sites told Argus today. The attacks on the Abqaiq crude processing plant and another facility at the 1.45mn b/d Khurais oil field have forced state-owned Saudi Aramco to shut in 5.7mn b/d of crude output.

The Abqaiq plant is Saudi Aramco's main center for processing Arab Light and Arab Extra Light crude grades. It handled about half of the company's crude output last year. Khurais is Riyadh's second-largest oil field by capacity.

The US Department of Energy already said yesterday it would release the US emergency stocks, in collaboration with the IEA on "potential available options for collective global action, if needed."

But Trump also took advantage of the incident to announce he "would expedite approvals of the oil pipelines currently in the permitting process in Texas and various other states."

The White House today also used the incident to promote Trump's "energy dominance" policy of spurring US domestic oil production. "This president also, through his energy policy, has made us less dependent on these foreign dictators and bad regimes for energy supply," Trump's political adviser Kellyanne Conway said in a televised interview. "We, now, in the US are net exporters of natural gas and oil at the highest levels this country has ever seen and that will continue."

Conway backed US secretary of state Mike Pompeo's claim yesterday that Iran was responsible for the attack on Abqaiq. But Conway said Trump was still considering a possible meeting with Iranian president Hassan Rohani, perhaps at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month.

Iran's foreign ministry has dismissed as "meaningless" the US claims that it was behind yesterday's drone attacks. Yemen's Houthi rebels, who are fighting a war against Saudi-led forces, said they targeted the two plants using 10 drones.

Washington's so-called "maximum pressure" campaign has failed and has now transformed into one of "maximum lies," Iran's foreign ministry said.