Saudi Arabia thwarts attack on the world's largest oil-processing facility

Riyadh

Saudi security forces repelled an attack allegedly near Aramco’s plant on Friday and killed the “terrorist,” Saudi’s state-run Al Ikhbariya TV reported.

Saudi’s national oil company, Aramco, owns the Abqaiq plant in the country’s eastern province. It is the largest oil-processing facility in the world, and previous attacks on the area immediately caused a significant spike in oil prices.

Though Saudi’s state-run news said “terrorist organizations” were not active in Abqaiq, the facility’s importance for Saudi oil exports and global oil sales put it at a much higher risk for terrorist attacks aimed at destroying Saudi’s oil exports to the US and stealing Saudi’s significant oil reserves.

Friday’s attack comes at a time when crude oil prices around the world have dropped to the lowest they’ve been in decades.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, averaging 8 million barrels per day, and its oil-production operations have been repeatedly targeted by terrorist organizations — most recently by the Islamic State group.

Abqaiq processes roughly two-thirds of that oil and can handle up to 7 million barrels every day.

Abqaiq, a gated community in Saudi’s eastern desert, has about 46 oil pipelines running through it, including a roughly 395-mile pipeline to Ras-Tanura, a Saudi city located on an eastern peninsula that leads to the Persian Gulf — a major point of export for Saudi oil on its way to the West, including to the US.

Abqaiq has been the victim of such attacks before. Militants linked to Al Qaeda engaged in a shootout with Saudi security forces inside the gated facility in 2006.

Though the attack did not cause significant damage, oil prices spiked $2 the following day, rising from $60.54 to $62.60.