The devastating drone and missile attack on Saudi Arabia's largest oil processing facility last Saturday has led to the biggest-ever supply disruption in the oil market from a single event. Some 5.7 million barrels of oil, equivalent to about 5 per cent of global supplies, were destroyed instantly. Analysts estimate that this amounts to a bigger supply outage than those resulting from the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74, the Iranian revolution of 1978-79, or the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-81.

The attack led initially to a 20 per cent spike in oil prices, which then moderated to around 12 per cent after Saudi Arabia provided assurances that it would be able to restore one third of the lost production within three days from its stored reserves and other facilities, even though the destroyed processing facility will take weeks to repair.