Saudi Arabia foils missile attack on its oil facilities

Saudi Arabia said early today that it intercepted a ballistic missile and several armed drones fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels at the country's oil-rich eastern province.

One of the missiles intercepted over the eastern city of Dammam overnight scattered shrapnel that injured two children and caused minor damage to 14 houses, according to the Saudi defence ministry.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group, which has been fighting a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen since 2015, said it had fired the missiles, targeting state-controlled Saudi Aramco facilities in Ras Tanura, close to Dammam, as well as in Jizan and Najran provinces. The Houthi movement said its attack on Ras Tanura, which is home to Aramco's largest oil export loading facilities and a 550 b/d crude and condensate refinery, involved firing eight armed drones and a missile.

Both the Saudi defence ministry and Aramco made no mention of any damage to oil facilities as a result of the attack.

A missile attack in 2019 on Aramco's largest 7mn b/d crude oil processing Abqaiq plant in eastern Saudi Arabia and on the 1.2mn b/d Khurais field forced the temporary shut-in of over 5.5mn b/d of crude output. Although the Houthis claimed responsibility for that attack, it is widely accepted that those missiles were fired from a location north-west of Saudi Arabia, rather than from Yemen to the south of the country.

The Houthi group has stepped up its drone attacks on Saudi Arabia recently, with the Saudis announcing interceptions on an almost daily basis.

Saudi Arabia and its allies, chiefly the UAE, intervened in Yemen in 2015 following the Houthi movement's 2014 ouster of the country's Saudi-backed president Mansour Abd Rabbo Hadi. The UAE has largely withdrawn from the conflict, pursuing its own agenda in southern Yemen through proxy forces.

Saudi Arabia's role is confined to an air campaign and to enforcing a blockade under the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen, which was established in 2016 at the request of Hadi's internationally recognised Yemeni government. It covers vessels sailing to ports not under its control, such as Hodeidah and Saleef, with the aim of preventing arms reaching the Houthis. The Hadi government must approve all vessels for entry to the ports. Civilian casualties have been high, and the blockade has contributed to widespread hunger and malnutrition in Yemen.

UN and US-backed peace talks, which have stalled in recent months, have focused on lifting the blockade on Houthi-controlled ports and Sana'a airport in return for a commitment by the Houthis to holding peace talks.

By Samira Kawar