Saudi Arabia has 2.5 million barrels a day of spare oil capacity, meaning it could pump 12.5 million barrels a day immediately if necessary, its Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said Tuesday, according to Bloomberg News.

But Naimi also said the oil market is better supplied today than in 2008, when oil spiked to a record $147 a barrel, and he said that, globally, the market is already oversupplied by 2.5 million barrels a day, Bloomberg reported.

Naimi described the current supply disruptions--cited as one reason for benchmark Brent crude trading at elevated levels around $124 a barrel--as "miniscule," the report says, and that he doubted the strategic Strait of Hormuz , through which passes 40% of global oil supply, will ever be shut, as Iran has threatened.

The world's leading oil exporter will pump 9.9 barrels a day in March and April, Naimi said at a briefing in Doha , Qatar , Bloomberg reported.

The minister also said it has between 40 million and 60 million barrels of crude in domestic storage and said the country's overseas storage tanks--in Rotterdam , the Netherlands ; Sidi Kerir , Egypt ; and Okinawa , Japan --are also full.
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