Saudi Arabia orders Aramco to cut oil capacity by 1M barrels per day

By Sibel Morrow

Saudi Arabia has ordered its national oil company, Saudi Aramco, to decrease its crude oil production capacity by 1 million barrels per day (bpd), according to a statement on Tuesday.

Aramco “received a directive from the Ministry of Energy to maintain its Maximum Sustainable Capacity (MSC) at 12 million bpd and not to continue increasing its MSC to 13 million bpd.”

The company will update its capital spending guidance when its full-year 2023 results are announced in March, Aramco added.

However, in its third-quarter financial statement for 2023, the company acknowledged that its total hydrocarbon production reached 12.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Saudi Arabia has been shouldering most of the production cuts for the OPEC+ group. The country announced in the group’s last meeting in November that it would continue the voluntary cut of 1 million bpd during the first quarter of 2024.

The voluntary cutbacks will be gradually restored subject to market conditions and remain in effect from January this year until March next year in an effort "to support market stability."

Saudi Arabia is also contributing to the group’s collective production cuts of 3.6 million bpd that will run until the end of this year. The collective output cuts include 2 million bpd of production cuts implemented in October 2022 and 1.6 million bpd ongoing since May.