Following the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure, some observers jumped to the conclusion that oil-exporting countries, Russia in particular, would be the main beneficiaries of the incident. If Riyadh failed to bring its output back on line within a short period, the argument went, the existing spare production capacity of other oil-exporting countries would not suffice to compensate for the lack of almost 6 million barrels per day on the market. The supply deficit, in turn, could raise oil prices far beyond the current level, potentially surpassing the $100 per barrel threshold.

Such a scenario would mean the enrichment of key oil producers, but bring no benefit to large oil consumers, such as the United States, European Union, India, China, South Korea and Japan. Parallel to that, the decrease in Saudi oil exports would resolve the projected problem of global oil oversupply in 2020 and allow the members of OPEC+, the group of OPEC and non-OPEC countries, to maximize profits by abandoning the production limitations they had adopted in 2016 to support oil prices. Rumors about secret negotiations by the Saudis to purchase Iraqi oil to feed their petrochemical industry, whose feedstock was stopped by the Abqaiq attack, only strengthened expectations of OPEC+ abolishing its production limits.

The uptick in oil prices was another reason some viewed Russia as the primary beneficiary of the situation. The price spike would of course increase Russian income, and abolishing oil production limits would please Russian energy behemoths like Rosneft, which had complained about the risks and losses stemming from the constraints on output in accordance with Russia's OPEC+ obligations. Moreover, within a couple of days after the drone attack, Rosneft and Lukoil had declared their readiness to pump additional volumes of oil for their overseas consumers. Despite these expectations that Russia would profit from the drone raids on Khurais and Abqaiq facilities, Moscow’s gains have turned out to be quite limited.

For starters, production shocks rarely last long, because demand requires less time to adjust to them than it takes for supply to adjust to shocks caused by consumer behavior. Initial estimates of the Saudis' ability to repair their oil infrastructure appeared to be overly pessimistic, and it now looks like pre-attack production volume will be restored by the beginning of October (while the restoration of production capacities will take two more months), but even putting that aside, the current aggregated world oil reserves are enough to satisfy existing demand for up to four months, a period sufficient for the global economy to readjust demand and bring additional production capacities online. Given this, the profit of oil suppliers from the current crisis will be less impressive and connected not so much to the Sept. 14 attack as to the expectation of additional attacks.