Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil giant Aramco has shut down its Ras Tanura refinery after a drone attack, industry officials said on Monday, in a clear escalation in the third day of attacks across the region launched by Tehran in response to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran.
The Ras Tanura complex on the Saudi Gulf coast is home to one of the Middle East’s largest refineries with a capacity of 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) and serves as an important export terminal for Saudi crude oil. Officials said Ras Tanura was closed as a precautionary measure and the situation was under control.
A Saudi Ministry of Defense spokesperson told Al Arabiya TV that two drones were intercepted inside the facility and debris caused a limited fire, adding that no one was injured. The closure of the port is likely to further exacerbate supply concerns, as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil consumption flows, has come to a near standstill after an attack on a ship near the strait on Sunday. Brent crude oil futures rose about 10% on Monday.
“The attack on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery marks a significant escalation, with Gulf energy infrastructure now under Iran’s nose,” said Torbjorn Saltvedt, principal Middle East analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft.
“This attack is likely to bring Saudi Arabia and neighboring Gulf states closer to joining the US and Israeli military operations against Iran.”
Aramco did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
The drone strikes added to a wave of attacks on areas including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Manama and Oman’s commercial port of Duqm. Most oil production in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, which exported about 200,000 barrels a day to Turkey in February, was halted over the weekend as a precaution, site operators said.
Saudi Arabia’s heavily fortified energy facilities have been targeted before, most notably in September 2019, when unprecedented drone and missile attacks on the Abqaiq and Khurais factories temporarily destroyed more than half of Saudi oil production and disrupted global markets.
Ras Tanura was attacked by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in 2021, which Riyadh called a failed attack on global energy security.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba; Additional reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Nadine Awadalla, Susan Fenton and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
