I would say(guess), oil play(ed)(s) a big part in the recent situation, NOT similar to 2008. It does however spotlight the ongoing shortage of USD. Next.
To reiterate, my guess that the Saudi pipeline explosion play(ed)(s) a part is just that... a guess. Repo activity can involve certain corporate bonds in addition to certain other non-government based assets. As such, it is POSSIBLE "borrower(s)" needed to convert those type assets into short-term cash (while maintaining all other monetary metrics and regulations). Unrelated to oil, there is now talk that the September 15 corporate tax deadline drained liquidity(cash) from the system. Because worldwide the USD is being sought. Positive interest rates are but only one reason.
There are a few authors/commentators who make a career of posting about obscure swap rates, Eurodollar "funding shortages" and similar themes, on Zerohedge and like-minded sites - usually with sinister undertones that the market is about to collapse, or some vague but serious crisis is about to explode. After all, we saw overnight funding stress in 2008 and you know what happened then... My advice is to ignore all this as it's mostly just noise. If there is something serious going on, you'll know about it.
Truthbomb. At least 60 percent of worldwide transactions are in US Dollars. You want the Fed injecting short term repo liquidity because you don't want a pre-2008 scenario where China was buying all the T-Bills and banks were using mortgage instruments for collateral because they couldn't find any T-Bills on the secondary market.