Riyaz Patel
Saudi state-owned company Aramco says drone attacks on two major oil facilities in Saudi Arabia have severely disrupted production, reports coming from the Kingdom said.
Sources quoted by Reuters and WSJ said the strikes had reduced production by five million barrels a day – nearly half the kingdom’s output, or 5 percent of the daily global oil supply, analysts with knowledge of Saudi’s oil operations said.
Yemen’s Houthi group claimed responsibility for the attacks on the two Saudi Aramco plants in the kingdom’s Eastern Province Saturday, the group’s military spokesman said on Al-Masirah TV.
The broadcaster said the Houthis had deployed 10 drones against the sites in Abqaiq and Khurais, as the group pledged to widen the range of its attacks on Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition fighting them in Yemen.
The Arab coalition fighting against the Houthis to reinstate the Yemeni government, said “investigations are ongoing to determine the parties responsible for planning and executing these terrorist attacks.”
“The Coalition continues to adopt and implement necessary procedures to deal with such terrorist threats in order to safeguard national assets, international energy security and ensure stability of world economy,” spokesman Col. Turki Al-Maliki said.
Yemen has been at war since 2015, when President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi was forced to flee the capital Sanaa, ousted by the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia backs President Hadi, and has led a coalition of regional countries against the rebels. The Iran-aligned Houthi rebel movement has been battling the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition.
Houthi spokesman, Yahya Sarea, told al-Masirah TV – which is owned by the Houthi movement and based in Beirut – said further attacks are imminent.
He said Saturday’s attack was one of the biggest operations the Houthi forces had undertaken inside Saudi Arabia and was carried out in “cooperation with the honourable people inside the kingdom.”
TV footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco’s largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield.
The fires are now under control at both facilities, Saudi state media say.
