Saudi Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said the attack against the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities will not impede Saudi Arabia from meeting its commitments to international clients.
It will maintain its perfect record that it started when King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman sent the first Saudi crude oil shipment to global markets in May 1939, he said in an internal message to Aramco staff and employees on the occasion of Saudi Arabia’s 89th national day, to be celebrated on September 23.
He remarked that this year’s national day celebrations coincided with the attack against the two oil facilities.
“We have another reason for national pride and that is the great accomplishment the heroic employees, in support of civil defense teams, achieved in containing the damage from the sabotage attacks,” Nasser noted.
"Every second counts in moments like these, and had we not acted quickly to contain the fires and undertake rapid restoration efforts, the impact on the oil market and the global economy would have been far more devastating."
"The fires that were intended to destroy Saudi Aramco had an unintended consequence: they galvanized 70,000 of us around a mission to rebound quickly and confidently, and Saudi Aramco has come out of this incident stronger than ever," Nasser said.
"Not a single shipment to our international customers has been missed or canceled as a result of the attacks, and we will continue to fulfill our mission of providing the energy the world needs," he said in the message, seen by Reuters.
Despite the scale of the terrorist attack, no infrastructure was damaged and reserves were not affected, Nasser stressed.
“The perpetrators wanted to break us, … but the attack had a positive effect in that it cemented to the world the great importance of Saudi Arabia and its oil industry,” he said.
Aramco already brought back part of the lost production and will return to pre-attacks level end of September, Nasser said.
