'While there were no reports of casualties, the attacks struck at the core of the Saudi economy..''Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on key Saudi oil facilities on Saturday, setting off blazes that could be seen from space and showcasing how cheap new technologies allow even minor militant groups to inflict serious damage on major powers.
The drone attacks — some 500 miles from Yemeni soil — not only exposed a Saudi vulnerability in the kingdom’s war against the Houthis, but raised the specter of other Iranian-backed groups using similar techniques elsewhere in the Middle East, including against American targets, experts said.
“This takes the proxy war to a new level in the region,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, co-founder of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, a research group focused on Yemen. Of the Houthis’ drones, he said, “Their ability to cause pain is very high and it costs very little.”
It was not clear how badly damaged the facilities were, but shutting them down for more than a few days would disrupt world oil supplies. Between them, the two centers can process 8.45 million barrels of crude oil a day, amounting to the vast majority of the production in Saudi Arabia, which produces almost one-tenth of the world’s crude oil.
The difference in resources available to the attacker and the victim could hardly have been greater, illustrating how David-and-Goliath style attacks using cheap drones are adding a new layer of volatility to the Middle East.
Such attacks not only damage vital economic infrastructure, they increase security costs and spread fear — yet they are remarkably cheap. The drones used in Saturday’s attack may have cost $15,000 or less to build, said Wim Zwijnenburg, a senior researcher on drones at PAX, a Dutch peace organization.
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The strike on one of the centers hit, in Abqaiq, is particularly worrying because it processes crude from several key Saudi oil fields, said Helima Croft, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank.
“This is the mother lode for an attack on Saudi infrastructure,” she said. “We have always been concerned about an attack on Abqaiq.”
Whether world oil supplies are disrupted “will depend on the degree of the damage,” she said. Such a disruption could lead to a release of oil from the United States’ strategic petroleum reserve.
A former senior executive of Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, said the company had enough reserves to keep world supplies steady if the plants were shut down for a few days, but a long disruption would be another matter.
While there were no reports of casualties, the attacks struck at the core of the Saudi economy..'
- The New York Times,
Drones Strike Big Saudi Oil Centers, and Houthis Claim Responsibility, September 14, 2019
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