Saudi Arabia sees its oil output cut in half after drone attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels spark huge fires at a sprawling oil processing facility 200 miles northeast of Riyadh.
In this image made from a video broadcast on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya satellite news channel on Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019, a man walks through a parking lot as the smoke from a fire at the Abqaiq oil processing facility can be seen behind him in Buqyaq, Saudi Arabia. Drones launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked the world's largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia and another major oilfield Saturday, sparking huge fires at a vulnerable chokepoint for global energy supplies.
The fires led to the interruption of an estimated 5.7 million barrels in crude supplies, according to the statement, which said part of that would be offset with stockpiles. The statement said Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil giant, would provide updated information in the next 48 hours. First word of Saturday’s assault came in online videos of giant fires at the Abqaiq facility, some 330 kilometers northeast of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Machine-gun fire could be heard in several clips alongside the day’s first Muslim call to prayers, suggesting security forces tried to bring down the drones just before dawn. In daylight, Saudi state television aired a segment with its local correspondent near a police checkpoint, a thick plume of smoke visible behind him.
The facility processes sour crude oil into sweet crude, then transports it onto transshipment points on the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea or to refineries for local production. Estimates suggest it can process up to 7 million barrels of crude oil a day. By comparison, Saudi Arabia produced 9.65 million barrels of crude oil a day in July.
There was no immediate impact on global oil prices as markets were closed for the weekend. Benchmark Brent crude had been trading at just above $60 a barrel.
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