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Power News

Ten Drones Attack Saudi Arabia's Oil and Gas Facilities (bbc.com) 293

Posted by EditorDavid from the drone-wars dept.
"Saudi Arabia has cut oil and gas production following drone attacks on two major oil facilities run by state-owned company Aramco..." reports the BBC. "TV footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco's largest oil processing plant [the world's biggest oil producer], while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield."

The Iran-aligned Houthi movement (fighting the Western-backed military coalition supporting Yemen's government) has claimed credit for the attacks. Slashdot reader dryriver shared this report from the BBC: Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said the strikes had reduced crude oil production by 5.7m barrels a day -- about half the kingdom's output. A Yemeni Houthi rebel spokesman said it had deployed 10 drones in the attacks...

In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Prince Abdulaziz said the attacks "resulted in a temporary suspension of production at Abqaiq and Khurais plants". He said that part of the reduction would be compensated for by drawing on Aramco's oil stocks. The situation was under control at both facilities, Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said, adding that no casualties had been reported in the attacks.
The BBC also notes that Saudi Arabia produces 10% of the world's crude oil, adding that "cutting this in half could have a significant effect on the oil price come Monday when markets open."
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Ten Drones Attack Saudi Arabia's Oil and Gas Facilities More

Ten Drones Attack Saudi Arabia's Oil and Gas Facilities

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  • Don't worry about this affecting US oil prices (Score:4, Funny)

    by penguinoid ( 724646 ) on Saturday September 14, 2019 @11:41PM (#59195604) Homepage Journal

    The US produces enough oil for themselves, and US oil companies will be glad to sell you gasoline at your usual price even if they could sell it at a much higher price on the global market.

    • Re:Don't worry about this affecting US oil prices (Score:4, Informative)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @01:16AM (#59195740) Homepage Journal

      The US last year exported 2 million barrels per day, and imported about 10 million per day. It sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense if you stop thinking of the US market as a single entity and instead think of myriad buyers and sellers negotiating thousand and thousands of individual deals.

      The US is definitely part of the international oil market, so international prices affect us. However the biggest driver of oil price volatility is demand. Global economic growth is sluggish in 2019 compared to 2018, so oil prices this year are lower than last year's. This event might cause a temporary blip in oil prices, but unless demand recovers it's not likely to have much long term impact.

      • Plus not all oil is interchangeable. Different regions and extraction methods produce different mixes of hydrocarbons and unwanted contaminants, which some refineries are better equipped to handle than others.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        If you produce oil in one location that is next to a port which makes export easy but transport to other parts of the domestic market are no easier where import from other locations is easy then it may make sense for one location to export and another to import. Especially, as noted, grades of crude come into play. An example might be that moving oil from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico where many refineries are is a long haul, even with the Panama Canal by ship, but relatively easy from Venuzuela.

    • and US oil companies will be glad to sell you gasoline at your usual price even if they could sell it at a much higher price on the global market.

      Why? Big oil companies are altruistic now? Or are you just spouting bullshit?

    • Who dunnit? gulf of tonkin? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @02:46AM (#59195832)

      THis is clear as mud. Yes the Houthi rebels claim it was their drones. But a previous strike on Saudi was Iranian cruise missiles. The saudi's say they are not convinced it was Houthi or drones. Might have been Cruise missiles.

      It also took place immediately after Bolton resigned and the Iranians know trump backed down from military retaliation when they shot down a US drone. So it would be a good time for them to strike when trump is without the bolton hard on for Iran.

      But there's other possibilities in play. It's not like US presidents (Johnson, Bush, roosevelt) haven't conjured up fake incidents (remember The Maine?, Gulf of Tonkin?, Iraqi Nukes?) to justify the wars they wanted. Trump has been begging the saudi's to reduce oil production. And here he gets that wish in return for being forced into an attack on Iran. The declining fortunes of the saudi leader will be reversed. THe proposed sale of advanced weapons blocked by the US senate will now happen. Trump will magically become the War-president right in time for the election. Gosh it all is working out so perfectly for Mr Trump and the Saudi's. And if not as bad as they claim they will be back on line quite soon. And if not then the US gets to sell more oil creating a financial windfall for the government both is taxes but also the sales from the national oil reserve. Huh... who would benefit from that boost right before his election?

      Not saying it's that way. But it could well be. Happened before.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        One thing is totally clear and the only thing worth commenting on this article, by far the majority across the board with regard to this event, assume the worst possible behaviour out of the USA and Saudi Arabia, nobody accepts Iran had anything to do with it and Pompeo again scores as a major bloated sack of, well, untruths. Nobody believes anything this fat idiot has to say any more, really stupid to keep the pompous idiot, you want a secretary of state that can sell bullshit, not one that nobody believes

      • How can you be so wrong? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Trump has been begging the saudi's to reduce oil production.

        You'd have to a be a WindBourne to be any wronger than this. Trump wants SA to pump more oil to cover for the loss of Iranian oil that he himself took off the market.
        Trump needs cheap oil to also cover for the rising prices of, well everything else due to his tariff war. Americans can't afford to pay more for everything, and more for gas too.
        Trump needs cheap oil to try and stop the US tipping into recession. At least until after the election.
        Trump had been threatening the Saudi's to not cut production.

      • I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying Trump planned this? That by setting a series of events into motion he anticipated that Iran would attack and therefore create an excuse to declare war on Iran? That's some genius level tactics from someone that is supposedly so lacking in intelligence that he gets lost on his way back from the restroom.

        Or, are you simply saying he got really really lucky through no action of his own?

        Or, is it that someone is pulling some strings and playing Trump like a puppet? If s

        • I'm saying none of that.

          I'm saying two things.
          1. Be very careful about early attribution. This gets spun to suite the powers that be. That's what happened in the Maine, Gulf of tonken, and all the Niger Uranium stories. things are not what they seem
          That doesn't mean trump did something here or got lucky or any of that. I'm saying once something happens what you hear first isn't always the whole story.

          2. There is also the sin of omission. Did someone let something that might have been thwarted happen b

      • How do you not know whether it was drones or cruise missiles (which are also drones, actually, being autonomous) in this day and age? What kind of noobs have military assets not covered by cameras?

    • Either the irony or the trolling is strong in this post. I am leaning heavily towards irony - and if I am wrong, the post's sponsors should to start hiring better trolls.

    • Sarcasm doesn't come across very well on the Internet. I'm guessing that's what this is.

    • Yeah because that was right at the top of my list of concerns...

  • Yes, that is the real story. Should keep the frackers in business for a little longer.

    There's a large Shiite population in that area. It's just as plausible they did it, more so when you consider the proximity, and they have been fighting for a long time.

    Gee! You would think the Saudis would be able to handle this, with that 100 billion dollar weapons deal and all.

  • This couldn't have happened to a nicer pair of countries! Put on the popcorn and pull for mutual total annihilation, princes and mullahs ground into the sand to be forgotten forever.

    And as a bonus, being energy independent suddenly got a lot more important. Now is the time to use all of our energy resources, cleanest first. The faster we can get the nukes built, the less coal we will have to burn.

    • The faster we can get the nukes built, the less coal we will have to burn.

      I'm not sure nuking all of them and stealing the coal so we don't have to burn ours is the answer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Gravis Zero ( 934156 )

      And as a bonus, being energy independent suddenly got a lot more important. Now is the time to use all of our energy resources, cleanest first. The faster we can get the nukes built, the less coal we will have to burn.

      A simple CO2 tax (that graduated over a decade to 100% the cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere) would make such a vision a reality. Subsidizing pollution is what got us to this impasse.

      • Re:Saudi Arabia vs Iran? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @03:54AM (#59195912)

        Unfortunately there is no such thing as a simple tax. You can start out with a simple tax, but soon people will find loopholes, which must be closed.

        Let's take a simple example: Income tax. That should be about as simple as a tax can possibly get: Take a person's income, run it through a simple mathematical formula, deduct tax. Couldn't be easier. But if you do that, it'll take about five minutes before employers realise they can dodge it by providing non-financial payments: Staff discounts, store credit, use of a personal company car, employer-provided housing. Now you have employees who are getting 'paid' but make a reduced taxable income on paper. So you need to expand your tax code to also cover all these benefits as well. Then companies start using 'tax-efficient' structures where employees become contractors, or paying them with financial instruments like stock or stock options which may change in value before they are sold, so you need to incorporate a way to tax all of those as well. Some companies will try more interesting means, like pretending to be churches or charities to claim non-profit status. Then there is the 'informal economy' - all those people who are happy to work cash in hand on short-term jobs, where outright tax evasion is easy. Soon your simple income tax has turned into a 1,500 page tome of arcane law as you try to handle all these edge cases and loopholes.

        Now try to tax CO2. Good luck with that. It's worth a try, but don't depend on it, and don't expect it to be easy - every stage of a production chain would want to claim a different stage already paid the tax.

  • Why would Iran want a shooting war? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shanen ( 462549 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @01:18AM (#59195742) Homepage Journal

    A little hard for me to understand why the Iranians would want to start a shooting war right now. Actually, it's rather easier for me to understand the motives of some politicians who would REALLY love to see a shooting war with Iran, including some candidates who have histories with false flag operations. (Do dictators still count as politicians? Maybe I was too diplomatic?)

    Therefore I'm reserving judgment for now. Not just regarding who did it, but how and why. By the way, that includes targeting information, since it seems like remarkably good shooting if only 10 drones could do that much damage. As regards sources of evidence, Pompeo's noisy testimony is not strongly persuasive.

    • Because Iran didn't do this. This is the US being the US.

    • Re:Why would Iran want a shooting war? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zumbs ( 1241138 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @02:50AM (#59195836) Homepage

      It wasn't Iran that bombed the Saudi oil facilities. It was the Houthi side of the civil war in Yemen. You know, the people that Saudi Arabia has been bombing for four years. With heavy civilian casualties.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        But they are being portrayed as proxies for Iran, and if Iran decided to do it, that would be the easiest place to initiate the attack. However, if anyone else wanted to frame the Iranians for it, that's also the natural place to initiate the attack.

        The thing that is still bothering me about the attack is how effective it was. Too much damage for a few random shots. Or maybe the Saudis just build highly vulnerable stuff? It's not like they have any terrorism problems or suicide bombers in the neighborhood,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zumbs ( 1241138 )

          The thing that is still bothering me about the attack is how effective it was. Too much damage for a few random shots. Or maybe the Saudis just build highly vulnerable stuff? It's not like they have any terrorism problems or suicide bombers in the neighborhood, right?

          I have no idea how hard it is for a missile to hit a plant like that and make it go boom, but the place produces oil, which is highly flammable. An explosion brings fire and access to oxygen.

          Even though the region has a lot of problems with terrorism (some sponsored by Saudi Arabia), and Saudi Arabia severely oppresses its Shi'ite minority, it is not my impression that they have a significant domestic terrorism, and Yemen has AFAIK not been able to strike back inside Saudi territory until now. So maybe the

      • Houthi with backing from Iran. It's just your classic proxy war: Two rival powers that can't go to war openly or they would destroy each other, so they instead back rival sides in conflicts elsewhere as they compete for influence. Preferably while maintaining a plausible deniability.

  • Kind of drones? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alaskana98 ( 1509139 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @01:19AM (#59195744)
    Wondering what kind of drones were used in this attack? Off-the-shelf drones (think quadcopters and their ilk) or 'real' drones (think U.S. Predator style 'jet' drones?).

    • I think more like remote-controlled fixed-wing aircraft, not quad/hex-copters.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by blindseer ( 891256 )

      Wondering what kind of drones were used in this attack? Off-the-shelf drones (think quadcopters and their ilk) or 'real' drones (think U.S. Predator style 'jet' drones?).

      I'm curious as well.

      I'm also curious on if they are using a proper definition of a drone here. It seems to me that a drone attack would mean the use of an unmanned bomber to drop explosives. If the "drone" was simply flown to the target with an explosive bolted to it, and then detonated, then it's a guided missile.

      I realize I may be pedantic here but words mean things.

      • The word drone is lost already. Give it up. You can hang a good 8 pounds or so from a DJI M600. 8 pounds of high explosives will do some damage.

      • Drone lost all meaning a while ago. Even the toy craft that would once have been called model or RC aircraft have now been renamed as drones.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      Likely fairly simple fixed wing drones with GPS coordinate waypoints designed by Iran:

      https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2019/05/21/how-yemens-rebels-increasingly-deploy-drones/ [defensenews.com]

      Supposedly, that's just what they can do, they can carry a 100 pounds around 100 miles to fixed GPS coordinates, so that's not really something you can buy at Walmart, but it's also nothing like a Predator jet.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        The targeted refinery was several hundred miles from Yemen, add even more for the Houthi rebel controlled areas.

        While it probably was a modern GPS guided variant on a V1 flying bomb it wasn't the model in your linked article.

  • Woot woot. Woot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Will James ( 6239184 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @01:22AM (#59195748)
    Hell yeah!! Let it burn, for decades Saudi Arabia has funded Al- Queda, then ISIS. Keeping under veil with minimum rights. Most recently murdering a journalist . Let it burn to the ground !

    • I get the sentiment but it would be nicer if the drone simply took out the government instead. They will continue to fund terrorism, grope glowing orbs with Trump, and murder people even with oil burning. The only thing this has achieved is increased prices for the population and a bunch of people out of work (though the latter being balanced with a bunch of firefights now definitely more at work and I also sense future construction jobs spiking int he area)

    • Repeated cluster bombing a diseased and famished civilian population should be on your list, too, especially since the attack was at least partly caused by that.

    • They actually kill journalists on the regular. This was just one that we're sure they killed in an embassy, which made it extra special

  • Same attack occurred 1 month ago. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Danny Brizzi ( 4831093 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @02:40AM (#59195826)
    They did the same thing almost a month ago with minimal sucess. Looks like they have learnt from the past failure. My guess it's just the start of things to come... https://www.aljazeera.com/news... [aljazeera.com]
  • Saudi Arabia presumably can afford hi tech defense, so why no anti drone defenses? Explosive drones seem cost effective. Yemen not known for tech capabilities nor financial wherewithal.

  • Bad for US defense industry (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Sunday September 15, 2019 @10:37AM (#59196446)

    Saudi spends billions on American weapons but oil facilities still get taken out. This ca be a signal to all countries buying American weapons that American weapons are not deterrence enough and maybe the money is better spent on foreign aid to neighbors to keep neighboring countries stable.

    • The Saudis failed to buy sufficient anti-UAS systems and may have had no coverage at all. Just because they have money doesn't make them smart. They are, culturally speaking, barely beyond living in tents in the desert. The 1930s were not a long time ago. Don't let the money fool you. They are so incompetent they can't defeat the Houthis next door.

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