Nothing to celebrate over Saudi Arabia’s oil mishap – Sylva

 

BY OUR EDITOR

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Slyva, says Nigeria has nothing to celebrate over the attack on Saudi Arabian oil facility which has triggered increase in the global oil price.

The Minister in an Interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, Thursday said that the act was sad and should be totally condemned.

Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing plant and the Khurais oil field had been attacked by a yet-to-be-identified group, even though Iran had been fingered as suspect. The attack led to the single-largest daily surge in crude prices in years.

The price of oil saw a massive price spike following what was believed to be drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities over the weekend.

The attack shut off more than half of the kingdom’s daily exports, or about five per cent of the world’s crude production.

“The attack on Saudi oil facility is very sad and I really do not want to look at it from the perspective of implications on Nigeria.

“I want to look at it as a very sad act and we condemn it in totality.

“This is because when you have such amount of production out at the same time, it is going to affect prices.

“Definitely, we are going to see oil prices go up a little bit that might be temporary gain for us but that’s not anything to be happy about.

“It’s a very temporarily gain but the act essentially is what should be condemned in totality,’’ he said.

The loss of the 5.7 million barrels of Saudi crude production represents the largest such disruption on record, according to figures from the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

Experts say it could take weeks before the kingdom would be able to restore full production at the facilities.

Riyadh says its stockpiles will keep world markets supplied until it can repair the damage at Abqaiq and Khurais. (NAN)