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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:32 am Post subject: ABQAIQ FACILITY ATTACKED |
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If you read Robert Baer's analysis of Saudi Arabia, "Sleeping with the Devil",
the book starts with imagining such an attack, how it could occur, and its consequences.
The name of this chapter is "THE DOOMSDAY SCENARIO".
| BLOOMBERG wrote: |
Oil Jumps After Attack Reported at Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq Center
Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil climbed the most in a month after al-Arabiya TV said Saudi Arabian forces repelled a suicide attack on the Abqaiq processing center, which handles two-thirds of the oil from the world's largest producer.
At least two car bombs were involved in the attack and an unspecified number of assailants were killed, the report said. The complex wasn't damaged, an official of the state oil company, Saudi Aramco, told al-Arabiya. Oil prices rose earlier after rebels threatened more attacks on Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer.
The Saudi Abqaiq center, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Persian Gulf coast, gathers oil from the country's fields and processes crude for export, said Julian Lee, a senior analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies. A halt in Saudi production would take out 11 percent of the world's oil.
``If this has an impact on exports and production, it would be close to one of the things the industry fears the most,'' said Lee in a telephone interview from London. ``If terrorists are successfully attacking the Saudi oil industry in whatever form, people are going to start worrying a lot.'' [click header for a link to the full story] |
| Associated Press wrote: |
Update 9: Saudi Oil Site Reportedly Attacked
02.24.2006, 09:33 AM
An explosion went off Friday at a major oil processing facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a Saudi oil official said. Suicide bombers in two cars attempted to attack the facility but were stopped by guards, though one exploded, damaging a pipeline, Al-Arabiya TV reported.
It was the first such attack on an oil facility in the kingdom, which has waged a fierce three-year crackdown on al-Qaida militants. There have been previous attacks on oil company offices, but not on a facility where oil is present.
The blast damaged a pipeline at Buqayq, a large complex that processes crude oil 45 miles southwest of the oil hub of Dammam on Saudi Arabia's Gulf coast, the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya said. Oil stopped flowing briefly but then resumed, it reported.
Security guards opened fire on the explosives-packed cars as they attempted to drive through the facility's gates, the Saudi-owned television network said. The two cars bore logos of Aramco, the state oil company that owns the facility.
One vehicle was stopped, and two people inside it were killed. The other vehicle exploded when the guards fired on it, the Al-Arabiya correspondent said. None of the guards were hurt, he said. |
Full story:
http://www.forbes.com/business/healthcare/feeds/ap/2006/02/24/ap2551288.html |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:50 am Post subject: |
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From p. xvii of "Sleeping with the Devil":
"Almost to a person, [the] disaster planners concluded that the Abqaiq extralight crude complex was both the most vulnerable point of the Saudi oil system and it's most spectacular target. With a capacity of 7 million barrels, Abqaiq is the Godzilla of oil-processing facilities."
From p. xix:
"A moderately successful attack on the Abqaiq facility's stabilizing towers would let loose 1700 ppm of [highly toxic as well as highly corrosive] hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere. That strength would dissipate, but not quickly enough to prevent the death of workers in the immediate vicinity and serious injury to others in the general area- or to stop sulfur dioxide from eating into the metallic heart of the Saudi oil infrastructure. The toxicity would deter the onset of repairs for months."
"Even as long as 7 months after [a successful] attack, Abqaiq output would still be about 40% of preattack output, as much as 4 million barrels below normal- roughly equal to what all of the OPEC partners collectively took out of production during the devastating 1973 embargo."
Can you imagine, given the earlier attack on the Samarra Mosque, what chaos there would be if this had been a successful attack? |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:55 am Post subject: |
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| I enjoyed reading the book. I'm surprised more attempts on Saudi's oil facilities haven't been made. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:15 am Post subject: |
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I'm looking at the timing.
(As I know you already know) Terrorist attacks- even suicide ones- are not simply a case of rounding up a few fools willing to die and a bunch of explosives and sending them off; they take months of careful planning and coordination.
It's not hard hard to believe that the Samarra attack and the Abqaiq one are simply coincidental, because what single group capable of planning and carrying out both of these attacks would benefit from them? No one that I can think of.
But what a coincidence!
One attack designed to ensure Shiia outrage and reprisals, the other designed to cripple the economic infratructure of the richest Sunni state.
You KNOW that all the conspiracy theory wacks are going to pin both on the US...  |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 11:20 am Post subject: |
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Here's a prescient analysis from the Feb 23 Terrorism Monitor- a day before the attack:
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Saudi Oil Facilities: Al-Qaeda's Next Target?
02/24/2006 - By John C.K. Daly (from Terrorism Monitor, February 23) -- At a time of record-high oil prices, analysts are beginning to consider the implications of possible terrorist attacks on Middle Eastern oil facilities. The crown jewel of these facilities is Saudi Arabia's oil production infrastructure. It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia possesses 261.9 billion barrels of proven oil reserves.
On January 19, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden broke a 14-month-long silence to warn that his organization is preparing further attacks against Western targets. Bin Laden said, "The war against America and its allies will not be confined to Iraq��As for similar operations taking place in America, it's only a matter of time. They are in the planning stages, and you will see them in the heart of your land as soon as the planning is complete" (al-Jazeera, January 19).
Saudi Arabia and its oil have long been in bin Laden's thoughts; in 1996, he said, "The ordinary Saudi knows that his country is the largest oil producer in the world, yet at the same time he is suffering from taxes and bad services��Our country has become a colony of America��Saudis know their real enemy is America" (UPI Intelligence Watch, March 21, 2005).
Neighboring Iraq demonstrates the crippling effects of an insurgency on oil installations. Since June 2003, there have been 298 recorded attacks against Iraqi oil facilities (Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, http://www.iags.org/iraqpipelinewatch.htm). As of December 2005, Iraqi production was averaging around 1.9 million barrels per day as compared with its January 2003 2.58 million barrels per day production rate (U.S. Energy Information Administration, December 2005). Moreover, the costs of infrastructure attacks are becoming staggering, with the Iraqi oil ministry announcing on February 19 that insurgent attacks had cost the oil industry $6.25 billion in lost revenue during 2005.
Aside from Saudi crude oil production capacity being the world's largest, at 10.5-11 million barrels per day, Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, controls the world's only significant excess production capacity, an extra 2.5-3 million barrels per day. This makes the kingdom the world's only guarantor of liquidity in the oil market. The Saudi economy is heavily dependent on energy, with oil export revenues bringing in around 90-95 percent of total Saudi export earnings, and generating around 40 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
The country's hydrocarbon infrastructure, with its massive production fields, ports and 10,000 miles of pipelines, presents a number of opportunities for potential attackers, whose success would have implications far beyond the kingdom, driving the world into recession or depression as energy costs soar.
Over half of Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are contained in just eight massive fields, including the huge 130-mile long, 20-mile wide Ghawar field, covering 2,600 square miles. Ghawar alone accounts for nearly half of Saudi Arabia's total oil production capacity. Aramco's skein of pipelines depends on 30 pumping stations, powered by six generators, which would shut down the flow if destroyed. Port facilities are concentrated on a 20-mile stretch of Persian Gulf shoreline from Juaymah to al-Khobar.
Saudi Arabia's offshore Safaniya oilfield is the largest of its kind in the world, with estimated reserves of 35 billion barrels. Continuing the trend toward gigantism, the Abqaiq refinery 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Bahrain processes about two-thirds of Saudi Arabia's crude oil. On the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura facility is the world's largest offshore oil loading facility, accounting for a tenth of the world's daily oil supply. A second loading facility is at Ras al-Juaymah, while Yanbu terminal is located on the Red Sea, supplied from Abqaiq via the 750-mile East-West pipeline.
Terrorist attacks could be easily launched against onshore facilities and tankers. Over 60 percent of the world's oil is shipped on 3,500 tankers through a small number of "chokepoints" including the Strait of Hormuz, which alone transits 13 million barrels of oil per day.
Al-Qaeda has already carried out maritime attacks on both warships and tankers. On October 6, 2002, the 299,364 DWT-ton French Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) tanker Limburg, carrying a cargo of 397,000 barrels of crude from Iran to Malaysia, was rammed by an explosives-laden boat off the port of Ash Shihr at Mukalla, 353 miles east of Aden. A crewman was killed and the double-hulled tanker was breached. The impact on the Yemeni economy was immediate, as maritime insurers tripled their rates.
Al-Qaeda issued a statement following the attack warning that it "was not an incidental strike at a passing tanker but...on the international oil-carrying line in the full sense of the word," prompting the U.S. Navy's Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain to issue a warning stating that "Shipmasters should exercise extreme caution when transiting...strategic chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz, or Bab el-Mandeb, or...traditional high-threat areas such as along the Horn of Africa."
Al-Qaeda's cadre of maritime specialists recently received a boost when on February 3, 23 prisoners escaped from a jail in Sanaa. Five days later, Interpol issued a global security alert, a Red Notice, to its 184 member states, as law enforcement officials believe that at least 13 of the fugitives have links to al-Qaeda. Among those who broke out of the prison was Jamal al-Badawi, who was serving a 10-year sentence for his part in the October 12, 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Aden harbor during a refueling stop; 17 sailors died and 39 more were injured in the attack.
The most worrisome scenario revolves around al-Qaeda crashing a hijacked commercial passenger jet into an oil installation. To consider just one scenario, a jetliner crashing into the Ras Tanura facility could remove 10 percent of the world's energy imports in one shot.
Former CIA agent Robert Baer has considered the implications of terrorist attacks on Saudi oil facilities, writing, "At the least, a moderate-to-severe attack on Abqaiq would slow average production there from 6.8 million barrels a day to roughly a million barrels for the first two months post-attack, a loss equivalent to approximately one-third of America's current daily consumption of crude oil. Even as long as seven months after an attack, Abqaiq output would still be about 40 percent of pre-attack output, as much as four million barrels below normal—roughly equal to what all of the OPEC partners collectively took out of production during the devastating 1973 embargo" (see Robert Baer's Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold our Soul for Saudi Crude). An al-Qaeda assault on Abqaiq would have the added propaganda effect of killing Americans. Abqaiq is an oil-company town; in 2005, nearly half of its approximately 2,000 inhabitants were U.S. citizens.
In the last few years, the Saudis have moved to tighten security around their oil installations. Unlike in Iraq, where insurgent attacks are focused mainly on the country's hydrocarbon infrastructure, thus far al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia have focused on "soft targets," namely the 3,000 foreign oil workers employed in the kingdom.
On December 16, 2004, bin Laden released an audiotape making an explicit connection between U.S. forces in Iraq and the region's oil reserves; in the audiotape, he praised the terrorists who attacked the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah. Bin Laden said, "Targeting America in Iraq in terms of economy and losses in life is a golden and unique opportunity. Do not waste it only to regret it later. One of the most important reasons that led our enemies to control our land is the theft of our oil. Do everything you can to stop the biggest plundering operation in history—the plundering of the resources of the present and future generations in collusion with the agents and the aliens...Be active and prevent them from reaching the oil, and mount your operations accordingly, particularly in Iraq and the Gulf, for this is their fate" (BBC, December 16, 2004). Three days later, the "al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula" posted a message on its website urging its members "to strike all foreign targets and the hideouts of the tyrants to rid the peninsula of the infidels and their supporters. We call on all the mujahideen to target the sources of oil which do not serve the Islamic nation but serve the enemies of the nation" (Agence France Press, December 19, 2004).
Judging by al-Qaeda's pronouncements, an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities seems to be only a matter of time. In terms of the global impact of such a strike, Robert Baer provides an extreme but not altogether improbable scenario: "Such an attack would be more economically damaging than a dirty nuclear bomb set off in midtown Manhattan or across from the White House in Lafayette Square��[and] would be enough to bring the world's oil-addicted economies to their knees, America's along with them." |
http://www.jamestown.org/news_details.php?news_id=165# |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Bulsajo wrote: |
infratructure of the richest Sunni state.
...You KNOW that all the conspiracy theory wacks are going to pin both on the US... |
Well then, it's a good thing we don't have any of those people on the board.
Just think how annoying it would be arguing with one of them.  |
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bignate
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
Location: Hell's Ditch
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| Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 6:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Hey Joo, I thought you said that the Saudis had this all figured out, that the secret police had put a stop to the potetial attack on Saudi assets.... |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:24 am Post subject: |
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Update: It looks like they found the rest of the cell.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4755366.stm
Saudis claim upper hand with al-Qaeda
By Rob Watson
BBC security and defence correspondent
According to the Saudi security forces five men were killed after a building was surrounded in Riyadh while a sixth man was captured in a separate raid in another part of the city.
Most significantly the Saudis are making a clear link between today's operations in Riyadh and last Friday's failed suicide attack against the massive oil processing plant at Abqaiq.
They claim three of the alleged militants killed today were followed to Riyadh from Abqaiq.
Notable successes
So what does all this say about the Saudis' continuing campaign against al-Qaeda militants?
The authorities claim, with some justification, to have al-Qaeda on the run in the kingdom.
Only recently the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said only a few extremists were now at large.
Certainly the Saudis can point to some notable successes.
There have been no major attacks in the kingdom for over a year and more than 100 militants have been killed by the security forces including the alleged leader of the Saudi branch of al-Qaeda.
The authorities also claim to have made strides in discouraging and preventing the recruitment of young men to the militant cause.
Target
But there's no doubt Saudi Arabia remains a target for al-Qaeda.
An al-Qaeda statement posted on the internet this weekend claimed responsibility for last Friday's failed attempt on Abqaiq and threatened further attacks on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities.
Such attacks also remain an ambition of the organisation's two main leaders, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who've both urged attacks targeting what they describe as an industry that steals oil from Muslims.
Over the last few years security at the country's oil facilities has been greatly strengthened.
Militants return
But analysts point out that the kingdom's oil fields and other facilities are so massive it is difficult to provide complete security.
That said, last Friday's failed attempt on Abqaiq does raise questions about the strength and capabilities of the militants.
Some analysts see the attack as lacking some of the thorough planning characteristic of al-Qaeda operations an indication that this was a hurried affair.
It's also been suggested that al-Qaeda's ranks in Saudi Arabia have been thinned by militants travelling to fight in neighbouring Iraq.
But that may prove a temporary respite for the Saudi authorities with some militants warning al-Qaeda will be stronger than ever when battle-hardened fighters eventually return home. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:18 am Post subject: |
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An Energy Pearl Harbor?
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Osama bin Laden's strategy is based on the conviction that the way to bring down a superpower is to weaken its economy. We "bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw [from Afghanistan] in defeat," bin Laden boasted in his October 2004 videotape. "We are continuing in the same policy to make America bleed profusely to the point of bankruptcy." His logic, feasibility aside, is simple: Bring the United States to a point where it can no longer afford to preserve both its military and economic dominance...
...Politically motivated attacks on oil pipelines in Iraq have kept more than 1 million barrels per day off the global oil market. Had this oil been in the market, the price per barrel would have been $10 to $15 lower, according to most energy analysts. For the United States, an importer of more than 11 million barrels a day, the terrorist premium alone costs $40 billion to $60 billion a year. |
It is amazing how much effect the Islamist extremists are having on our economy. |
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