RIYADH, 6 May 2004 — As world oil prices soar following Saturday’s attack on a oil facility in the Kingdom, state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco repeated yesterday that it was business as usual amid signs that Westerners were not rushing to leave the area.
“I would emphasize (again) that no Saudi Aramco facilities or personnel were affected by the attacks and that normal operations continue at all of the company’s facilities,” a spokesman told AFP.
“I also want to emphasize that the safety and security of our facilities, and of our employees and their dependents who live and work in them, continue to be our top priority and we have comprehensive security at all times,” he said from company headquarters in the eastern oil center of Dhahran.
Saudi Aramco, which runs the operations of the world’s top oil exporter, said much the same thing hours after Saturday’s shooting in the industrial Red Sea port of Yanbu which claimed the lives of five Westerners working for ABB Lummus, a US-based arm of European engineering group ABB.
Despite the reassurances, oil prices surged to levels last seen in 1990 in the run-up to the Gulf War, before easing back slightly yesterday, with benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for June delivery losing eight cents to $35.85 a barrel in early trading in London.
New York’s reference light sweet crude June contract lost 16 cents to $38.82 in pre-opening electronic deals.
On Tuesday, New York’s benchmark contract surged 77 cents to close at $38.98 a barrel, the highest finish since October 12, 1990. Brent North Sea crude for June leapt 1.45 dollars to 35.93 dollars a barrel, also the highest close since October 1990.
Prices rocketed amid worry over US gasoline supplies and the situation in Saudi Arabia, which has an OPEC production quota of 7.638 million barrels per day (bpd).
Traders are concerned over the rising demand during the US “summer driving” season and China’s increasing thirst for oil.
Western and oil industry sources here said Western expatriates, many of whom are associated with the oil business, appeared less nervous than the market about the possibilities of further violence in Saudi Arabia.
Where Aramco is concerned, “there is nothing that even slightly indicates that anyone is leaving,” one industry source said. The company’s personnel, which number about 54,000, include around 2,300 North Americans - US and Canadian citizens - and around 1,100 Europeans, most involved in high-skill sectors.
The United States had urged its approximately 30,000 citizens here to leave in mid-April, before the Yanbu terrorist attack and a deadly car bombing in Riyadh 10 days earlier that targeted a security forces building.
The point was made again by the US ambassador to Saudi Arabia after the Yanbu attack, but a spokesman for the embassy here said he did not have the impression that there was a “great rush” to go. Another Western diplomatic source said he did not believe there would be a significant reduction of the Western community in the short term.
The number of Western expatriates might shrink in the longer term as some work contracts run out, but those who have been here for a long time are likely to stay put, he told AFP.
