Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Aramco shut its Ras Tanura refinery after it was hit by a drone, an industry source said on Monday, an apparent escalation on the third day of strikes across the region launched by Tehran in response to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. The Ras Tanura complex, on the kingdom’s Gulf coast, houses one of the Middle East’s largest refineries with a capacity of 550,000 barrels per day (bpd) and serves as a critical export terminal for Saudi crude.
According to the source, Ras Tanura was closed as a precaution, and the situation is under control. According to a spokesman for the Saudi military ministry on Al Arabiya TV, two drones were intercepted at the site, and debris caused a small fire. No one was hurt. Its shuttering will likely add to supply anxieties as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of global oil consumption flows, grinds to a near-halt after vessels were attacked around it on Sunday. Brent crude futures surged roughly 10% on Monday.
“The attack on Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery marks a significant escalation, with Gulf energy infrastructure now squarely in Iran’s sights,” said Torbjorn Soltvedt, Principal Middle East Analyst at risk intelligence firm Verisk Maplecroft. “The attack is also likely to move Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Gulf states closer to joining U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran.”
Aramco did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Attacks on Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Manama, and Oman’s economic port of Duqm were among the several targets of the drone strike. As a precaution, field operators reported that the majority of oil production in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, which supplied about 200,000 barrels per day to Turkey in February, was suspended over the weekend.
Before September 2019, when unprecedented drone and missile assaults on the Abqaiq and Khurais installations briefly shut down more than half of the kingdom’s crude production and shook international markets, Saudi Arabia’s heavily guarded energy facilities were the focus of attacks.
In 2021, the Iran-aligned Houthis of Yemen assaulted Ras Tanura in what Riyadh described as a failed attack on global oil security.
