Oil facilities in Saudi Arabia hit by drone attacks

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Yesterday, oil facilities belonging to Saudi Arabia's state-owned Saudi Aramco were hit by multiple drone strikes in a pre-dawn raid. The attacks triggered major fires at a processing plant and an oil field, which state media said were under control. The Yemen-based Houthi movement claimed responsibility for the attacks.

According to the Saudi Press Agency, the attacks occurred at 4:00 A.M. local time (0100 UTC) and struck the largest processing plant at Abqaiq and the Khurais oil field. The oil field is about 160 km (100 miles) east of the capital, Riyadh. The agency did not mention if there were casualties, but said exports were continuing.

Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported both production and export of oil had been disrupted. Saudi officials subsequently said 5.7 million barrels of per-day production had been disrupted. This would be nearly half of Saudi Arabia's entire production and around five percent on a global basis.

Speaking on al-Masirah TV in Yemen, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said it had carried out the attack using ten drones. According to him, it was among the largest Houthi operations inside of Saudi Arabia and was accomplished with the help of "honourable people inside the kingdom".

"These attacks are our right, and we warn the Saudis that our targets will keep expanding", Saree said. "We have the right to strike back in retaliation to the air strikes and the targeting of our civilians for the last five years."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted a message on Twitter blaming Iran for the attacks, saying there was "no evidence the attacks came from Yemen." BBC's Jonathan Marcus said questions remain how much direct Iranian assistance is received by the Houthis who are ideologically aligned with Iran.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia started supporting the government of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi against the Houthi rebellion, providing airstrikes with the Royal Saudi Air Force. The United Nations called the resulting humanitarian crisis the worst in the world.

In 2006, Abqaiq was the target of an Al-Qaeda suicide attack.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Related news

"Suicide bombers attack mosques in Sanaa, Yemen" — Wikinews, March 21, 2015

Sister links

Yemeni Crisis

Sources

Stephen Kalin, Rania El Gamal and Dmitry Zhdannikov. "Houthi drones hit Saudi oil heartland, sources say crude flows disrupted" — Reuters, September 14, 2019
"Saudi Arabia oil production reduced by drone strikes" — BBC News Online, September 14, 2019
"Houthi drone attacks on 2 Saudi Aramco oil facilities spark fires" — Al-Jazeera, September 14, 2019

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License