Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura, which houses its largest domestic refinery and a key crude export terminal, was struck again on Wednesday by an unknown projectile, four sources said, two days after a source said a drone attack on the complex shut the refinery.
Initial indications show an attack on the Ras Tanura refinery was carried out by a drone and resulted in no damage, Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry spokesman said, according to the state news agency. The agency also cited an energy ministry source as saying that there was no disruption to supplies. Saudi Arabia and other regional Gulf oil producers, such as the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq, have been unable to move oil through the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Friday.
Hundreds of ships have anchored on either side of the Strait as a precaution, and Iran has said it would fire on any vessel that attempted to transit the shipping choke point. Ras Tanura sits on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast on the Gulf. Aramco is attempting to reroute some of its crude exports to the Red Sea to avoid the Strait, sources have said. Aramco did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Saudi Arabia’s heavily fortified energy facilities have been targeted previously, most notably in September 2019 when unprecedented drone and missile attacks on the Abqaiq and Khurais plants temporarily knocked out more than half of the kingdom’s crude production and roiled global markets.
Ras Tanura was attacked by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in 2021, in what Riyadh called a failed assault on global energy security.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari in Riyadh, Maha El Dahan in Dubai and Yousef Saba; Editing by Jan Harvey and Tomasz Janowski)