The current oil supply crisis shows there is underinvestment in oil refining as demand holds resilient, Saudi state-owned Aramco’s vice president of market analysis and sustainability, Musaab Al Mulla, said on Tuesday.
Around 3 million barrels per day of refining capacity closed between 2020 and 2023, Al Mulla said at the S&P Global Energy Middle East Petroleum and Gas Conference in London.
“Now we realise if you have those refineries you may have definitely mitigated the impacts of the crisis today,” he said.
The war in Iran, attacks on energy infrastructure and Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz followed by a U.S. naval blockade, have removed around 14 million bpd of oil supply from Middle East producers to the global market.
(Reporting by Robert Harvey in London, Editing by Andrew Heavens and Louise Heavens)