00:02United Arab Emirates Air Defense takes out Iranian Shahed drones, likely somewhere over
00:07the Arabian Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz. It remains too dangerous to navigate and 20 million
00:13barrels a day of oil exports are backing up fast.
00:16That is creating additional problems for oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia,
00:21the UAE, Kuwait and so on. And the big problem is that if those countries could not evacuate
00:26those exports then they would have to store that crude but there is a physical limitation
00:32to how much crude they can store.
00:34Collectively, the Gulf states can store about 343 million barrels of oil to handle any temporary
00:40disruption and analysis suggested they had about 22 days of storage buffer when the war
00:45broke out on February 28th. But each nation is different. Without exports, Iraq had storage
00:51for just six days and has already announced a 1.5 million barrel a day cutback. Saudi Arabia
00:58was better off with 66 days and an overland pipeline that can handle five million barrels a day.
01:04But that's a stopgap measure at best.
01:07There's limited options to move more oil out. Saudi Arabia has been trying to move more oil
01:13through their pipelines to the Red Sea. But it's building up. Kuwait is discussing shutting
01:22in production and you have to think that's going to basically move from country to country.
01:29Strikes on regional refineries and other oil infrastructure have already sparked shutdowns.
01:35But an inability to ship oil out would mean a halt of another kind, one that would be far
01:41longer lasting and that on a technical level could mean weeks before any flow resumed.
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