Saudi Arabia restores over 75 pc oil output, will return to full volume by next week

Agencies
September 24, 2019

London, Sept 24: Saudi Arabia has restored more than 75 per cent of crude output lost after attacks on its facilities and will return to full volumes by early next week, a source briefed on the latest developments has said.

Saudi oil production from its Khurais plant is now at more than 1.3 million barrels per day, while current production from its Abqaiq plant is at about 3 million bpd, the source said.

The September 14 attacks on the two giant plants caused raging fires and damage that halved the crude output of the world's top oil exporter, by shutting down 5.7 million barrels per day of production.

Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and the chief executive of state oil company Aramco, Amin Nasser, have said output will be fully back online by the end of September.

The attacks sent oil prices up 20 per cent although they came off after the kingdom pledged to bring back output swiftly. On Monday, prices stabilised at $64 per barrel, paring earlier gains, following comments by the source.

The kingdom has managed to maintain supplies to customers to the levels they were at prior to the attacks by drawing from its huge oil inventories and offering other crude grades from other fields, Saudi officials said.

Saudi said it would ensure full oil supply commitments to its customers. The kingdom ships more than 7 million bpd to global destinations every day, and for years has served as the supplier of last resort to markets.

No casualties were reported at the sites even though thousands of workers and contractors work and live in the area. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday repairs at the plants could take months longer than anticipated.

Thousands of employees and contractors have been pulled from other projects to work around the clock in bringing production back. Aramco is shipping equipment from the United States and Europe to rebuild the damaged facilities, Aramco officials told reporters on Friday.

Reporters were shown repair work underway at both locations on Friday, with cranes erected around burnt-out stabilisation columns, which form part of oil-gas separation units.

Saudi Arabia's ability to restore oil production quickly after the attacks, which hit at the heart of the Saudi energy industry, would demonstrate an important degree of resilience to potentially very damaging shocks, Moody's said last week.

Aramco is getting ready for an initial public offering possibly later this year. Aramco has a meeting with analysts scheduled for Wednesday at the company's headquarters in Dhahran, two sources said.

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News Network
March 11,2020

Mar 11: Thirteen of the 22 rebel MLAs in Madhya Pradesh have given an assurance that "they are not leaving the Congress", senior party leader Digvijaya Singh said on Thursday while expressing confidence that the Kamal Nath-led government in the state will win a floor test.

"We are not keeping quiet. We are not sleeping," Singh told PTI, a day after Congress leader from the state Jyotiraditya Scindia quit the Congress and 22 MLAs submitted their resignations from the assembly in Madhya Pradesh.

Scindia was offered the post of Madhya Pradesh deputy chief minister but wanted his nominee, Singh said. However, Kamal Nath refused to accept a "chela", he said.

Scindia, he said, could have been a Congress nominee to the Rajya Sabha but "only Modi-Shah" can give a Cabinet post to the "over-ambitious" leader.

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News Network
July 4,2020

Maryland, Jul 4: The total number of coronavirus cases worldwide has touched 11 million, according to the latest data by the Johns Hopkins University on Saturday.
More than 523,613 people have died globally due to the infection, according to the data compiled by the university.

Though the virus is believed to have emerged from the Chinese city of Wuhan, the United States is the worst-hit country from COVID-19, which was declared as a pandemic by the WHO on March 11.

At least 129,275 people have died in the US from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University's latest tally.
There are at least 2,786,178 cases of the disease in the country. The US has the highest number of cases in the world.

The second worst-hit country is Brazil, which has reported 1,496,858 lakh cases. The country's death toll stands at 61,884.

The countries around the world including the US, India, Denmark, and Italy have started the process of lifting the lockdown by easing restrictions despite the number of cases continues to rise.

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News Network
January 13,2020

New Delhi, Jan 13: Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has fired around 50 of its India executives as part of its restructuring in the country, three sources with direct knowledge said.

The move underscores the struggles Walmart has faced in expanding its wholesale business in India. The Bentonville, Arkansas based company currently operates 28 wholesale stores where it sells goods to small shopkeepers, and not to retail consumers.

The firings mostly affected executives in the company’s real estate division because the growth in the wholesale model has not been that robust, two of the sources said.

“It’s happening because focus is shifting to e-commerce rather than physical (stores),” said one source, who declined to be identified as the decision is not public.

Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.

Walmart has placed bold bets on India’s e-commerce sector. In 2018, it paid $16 billion to acquire a majority stake in India’s online marketplace Flipkart, in its biggest global acquisition.

The second source added that while Walmart could slow down the pace of opening new wholesale stores, the focus will increasingly be on boosting sales through business-to-business and retail e-commerce.

Some of the executives were sacked last week and more could be let go on Monday, two sources said.

In a statement to India’s Economic Times newspaper, which first reported the news, Walmart said it was always looking for ways to operate more effectively and that “this requires us to review our corporate structure to ensure that we are organized in the right way to best meet the needs of our members.”

Walmart has around 600 staff in its India head office out of a total of around 5,300 nationally, one of the sources said.

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