Mastodawn

https://www.france24.com/en/france-confirms-oil-crisis-says-30-40-gulf-energy-infrastructure-destroyed

France's Finance Minister Roland Lescure revealed on Wednesday that between 30 and 40 per cent of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran's retaliatory strikes, leaving a shortage of 11 million barrels a day on global oil markets. Lescure warned it could take up to three years to restore damaged facilities, and several months to restart those that were urgently shut down.

Business - France confirms oil crisis, says 30-40 percent of Gulf energy infrastructure destroyed

FRANCE 24

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BashStKid

@cstross I know nothing, but I am a bit sceptical. Gulf states will exaggerate damage for several reasons:
- to play dead and avoid Iran targeting them again
- to claim force majeure on existing fixed price sales and sell instead at higher prices
- bit of insurance fraud
- jockeying for position with the few limited vendors who will be asked to do all the repairs for everyone.

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Graydon 15h ago

@BashStKid @cstross The French have independent satellite recon and a substantial intelligence apparatus; their Finance Minister doesn't have to rely on what the Gulf States are saying. For Gulf State press releases you might have a point, but this is a minister of state doing something he knows will immediately make his job harder and his country worse off. I would tend to expect that his numbers are what he thinks of as the real numbers.

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BashStKid 15h ago

@graydon @cstross Those are very fair points.

In particular, I wonder how much the Gulf countries have inadvertently all chosen the same local engineering firms for their plant and instrumentation, and now they’re all stuffed because they have nothing in the warehouse.

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Graydon 13h ago

@BashStKid @cstross Maintenance planning and rebuilding planning are going to be different; maintenance goes through x amount of long-lead-time-spec pipe per year, while rebuilding would require a few thousand x and oh dear, the one place on earth that makes that stuff is booked for the next five years.

So the warehouse is not so much empty as meta-empty; no one expected to rebuild any of those facilities and the productive capacity to produce the materials hasn't been allocated.

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Graydon 13h ago

@BashStKid @cstross I would also expect none of the Gulf States care right now; it's not over, and rebuilding before things are definitively over won't do anything to improve matters.

In the meantime, they need to import food, spares, and necessities of life and were accustomed to do that by sea. A prolonged closure of navigation amounts to a regional siege.