File image.
Saudi oil giant Aramco’s SAMREF refinery in the Red Sea port of Yanbu was targeted in an aerial attack on March 18, as Iran expanded its retaliatory strikes after an American-approved Israeli attack on its largest gas field.
The kingdom’s ministry of defense said in a statement that a ballistic missile targeting the port was shot down. It acknowledged, however, that a suicide drone fell at SAMREF, added that scale of damage at the refinery is still being assessed.
An industry source who spoke to Reuters described the damage at the refinery, a joint venture between Aramco and American ExxonMobil, as a “minimal impact”. The news agency also reported a brief halt of exports from the port after the attack.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued an evacuation warning to several oil facilities across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, including SAMREF, a day earlier following the Israeli attack on South Pars gas field in the south of the Islamic Republic. The attack, which was reportedly approved by the United States, was a major escalation in the ongoing war.
Yanbu has been one of two major export outlets for crude oil out of Gulf countries since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the American-Israeli war.
The other major export outlet is the UAE’s port of Fujairah, which has come under a series of attacks that suspended operations there.
Overnight, large blasts were reported near the Saudi capital, Riyadh, right as the kingdom’s ministry of defense announced that four ballistic missiles heading in the direction of the city were intercepted. The target hit was reportedly the Aramco Riyadh refinery.
The UAE also reported a “terrorist attack” by Iran on the Habshan gas facility and the Bab field south of the capital, Abu Dhabi, overnight.
The Habshan facility is one of the world’s largest gas processing facilities, while the Bab field is the UAE’s largest onshore oil field.
Also overnight, QatarEnergy said that Iranian missile attacks on Ras Laffan, the site of Qatar’s core liquid natural gas processing operations, caused “extensive damage”.
In addition to the attacks reported in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said that two operational units at the Mina Abdullah Refinery were hit by drones on March 19. The attacks caused fires, but the scale of damage remains unclear.
Energy prices spiked as a result of these attacks. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, extended the previous day’s gains, rising more than 6% to above $114 a barrel, having traded even higher earlier in the day. Meanwhile in Europe, benchmark natural gas prices surged 16.7% on the day, having soared 25% at one point.
The attack on the South Pars field was clearly meant to provoke Iran in an attempt to drag Saudi Arabia and the rest of Gulf countries into the war, and it has been successful to some extent in this regard.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has warned that the kingdom reserves the right to take military actions “if deemed necessary”.
“What little trust there was before has completely been shattered,” he said after a meeting between foreign ministers of the Gulf Arab states and others over the Iranian attacks tearing at the wider Middle East.
“The attacks on my country and on my neighboring countries that are not involved in this conflict — that’s all I’m interested in,” Prince Faisal continued. “We’re going to use every lever we have — political, economic, diplomatic and otherwise — to get these attacks to stop.”
Iran, which is currently facing both the U.S. and Israel, will not likely be deterred by the Saudi warning. While recent strikes inflicted some serious losses on Gulf countries, they stand to lose far more from joining the war on the Islamic Republic, which clearly is not going as planned.
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you know these pathetic arab weasels will not sending dollars into the ussa economy after this war. they will need to rebuild. less demand for ussa junk bonds, fake chat joo pee tee stocks. also, foreigners will flee the gulf. ussa bases are burning rubble. iran is bombing the heart of the petrodollar. attack petrodollar, attack the black heart of the new york jews
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israel cares not if the region is destroyed. only that it might remain. it is like a dragon that consumes all in its path to admire the abomination it is.
the rest of the world shall submit to slavery.
113 bucks.
brent crude. less than 70 rhree weeks ago. this time it will not be just helpless palestinians who will suffer. the jooz, the amerikunts, the quisling gulf dictators, all who enable joo genocide and aggression, will pay a very high price, something they have never known before. these clowns have blown up the whole global financial system.
saudi arabia crying while they had no trouble allowing their country to be used as forward base to attack iran and other neighboring countries. bittersweet.