Saudi Aramco offers more spot crude cargoes to Europe for late October to November
Aramco is offering extra cargoes to European buyers for delivery through mid-November, three trade sources say.
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Chart: USO, a fund that tracks crude, one-minute prices, three sessions
Saudi Aramco is offering more spot crude oil cargoes into the European market for delivery from late October through mid-November, according to three trade sources.
The extra barrels come weeks after Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said the company's crude buffer is nearly gone, warning that commercial inventories have fallen below 6 billion barrels and that rebuilding the cushion could take two years. Nasser said Aramco is studying new export routes and additional overseas storage as the buffer shrinks.
The move also follows Aramco's decision to cut Arab Light prices to Asian buyers by the steepest discount in six years, a cut already read as a sign of looser physical supply than the market's risk premium implied. Taken together with the new European cargoes, the pattern is of a seller competing for demand rather than rationing scarce crude.
Separately, Houthi forces say they struck an Aramco oil distribution site in Jeddah, following an earlier attack on Aramco's Dhahran headquarters that Saudi officials say caused a limited fire. Those strikes continue to sit alongside Aramco's commercial moves as a distinct story about the security of Saudi energy infrastructure, with no confirmed effect so far on the company's output or export capacity.