Saudi Arabia has said oil production will be back to normal by the end of September in a boost for tanker owners.
The weekend drone attack on two huge oil complexes took out 5.7m barrels per day (bpd), more than 5% of global demand.
But Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Tuesday that average oil production in September and October would be 9.89m bpd and that it would ensure full commitments to its customers this month.
“Over the past two days we have contained the damage and restored more than half of the production that was down as a result of the terrorist attack,” he told a news conference in Jeddah.
He said the kingdom would achieve 11m bpd capacity by the end of September, and 12m bpd by the end of November.
“Oil supplies will be returned to the market as they were before 3.43am Saturday,” he added.
The minister said that state oil giant Aramco had emerged “like a phoenix from the ashes”.
Chinese state oil company sources had said earlier in the week that Aramco had said October crude loadings could be delayed by 10 days.
US oil futures were down 5.7% at $59.24 a barrel after the news - the worst one-day drop for US oil since 1 August, according to Refinitiv.
In the aftermath of the attack, analysts had said a prolonged outage would be very negative for crude tankers, although product carriers were expected to benefit.
