ENERGY : Saudis Pull Out Stops to Bolster Oil Output : Petroleum: Facilities mothballed back in the mid-1980s are being reactivated to bring production back to peak levels if needed.

Saudi Arabia is working flat out to reactivate oil facilities mothballed during the mid-1980s and could bring output back to peak levels of 10 million barrels a day within a year if needed, industry sources say.

Oil executives and analysts said that Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, would have to revert to less sophisticated production techniques to pump the extra 2 million to 2.5 million barrels per day of crude oil but that the country wants to be able to do so if the Persian Gulf crisis escalates.

“We have already started de-mothballing and are moving ahead as quickly as possible so that in a year we could produce everything the market may want,” a Saudi oil source said.

“We don’t want to do it unless we have to because it would be like a car going uphill--but if necessary, we could go back to 10 million barrels per day within a year,” he said.

Saudi Arabia has already boosted wellhead output by nearly 50% to nearly 8 million barrels per day to help compensate world markets for the loss of around 4 million barrels of Iraqi and Kuwaiti oil.

This level, dubbed the “surge capacity,” is not sustainable. But oil industry sources say state-owned Saudi Aramco is taking steps to make it so within six to nine months.

Saudi Arabia, which has 25% of the world’s known oil reserves, favors keeping oil prices moderate to ensure long-term demand for its most precious commodity.

Iraq, which invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, has threatened to destroy Persian Gulf oil fields--the richest in the world--if it is attacked by foreign forces massing in Saudi Arabia.

Oil prices hit nine-year highs this week on fears of war in the area and as the absence of embargoed Iraqi and Kuwaiti crude began taking effect.

Persian Gulf analysts say Saudi Arabia is doing everything it can to calm the jittery market. It raised production two weeks after Iraq invaded Kuwait but waited for an agreement among the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries last month before selling the extra oil.

“If war broke out and fields in the north of the country were damaged, they would want to pick up production from other fields,” said one Western oil analyst based in Saudi Arabia.

“I think they could rehabilitate the old fields within a year, but they would have to go back to production techniques they used in the early 1980s,” he said.

Saudi oil sources said the country would have to start burning off natural gas produced with the oil as it did in the early 1980s and would be pumping mainly heavy crude if it raised output quickly.