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| Arabia |
| Saudi oil protected from al-Qaeda attack |
| 2005-03-20 |
| Saudi Arabia's oil installations may be under threat from Islamic militants of the al-Qaeda network, but the facilities are not nearly as vulnerable as one might think, independent experts say. Given that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, wields enormous influence over oil prices, the security of its wells, drilling stations and export terminals are a key concern to world markets. But in western oil circles, specialists insist that protective measures have been taken to ensure that any attempted attack would fail to destroy crucial parts of the oil production and export system. "The Saudis have installed exceptional defense systems. They've always done that, but they've heavily reinforced them in the past year," says Roger Diwan of PFC Consulting in Washington. "There are huge exclusion zones around the installations, 100 to 120 kilometers (60 to 75 miles) in diameter, fortresses in the desert guarded by colossal means—satellites that detect anything that moves, helicopters, radar, the army, their own security forces. "Their only real fear is internal sabotage, so they watch everything extremely closely." Isolated in the desert and surrounded by numerous barriers, watchtowers and beaches of white sand in order to track footprints, the nerve centers are out of reach to potential attackers, according to those who have been able to visit the sites. The 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) of pipelines that wind around the peninsula are at greater risk, but they are easily and quickly repaired. "If a pipe bursts, we cut the valves, detach the broken part, bring in a trunk of tubing by helicopter and weld it together. The whole process can be done in 24 hours." The head of Paris-based magazine PetroStrategies, Pierre Terzian, adds: "There are storage facilities, so [a broken pipeline] would have no impact on shipments, stocks are regulated while the repairs are being done. "You would have to have a massive attack, on the scale of September 11 (2001 attacks on the United States) for it to have an impact. A bomb or a even a car bomb that blows up a security barrier would have no effect." However, offshore in the Gulf, where the world's tankers dock at export terminals, the Saudis are most exposed. The metallic platforms could be the target of suicide attacks by small boats, similar to the ones used off neighboring Yemen against the US destroyer Cole in 2000 or the French tanker Limburg in 2002. In London Leos Drollas of the Center for General Energy Studies insists that the Saudis "have lots of patrol boats and I suspect, with American help, echo-finders to see that frogmen don't come." But, he said, attackers "could take over a tanker, fill it with high explosives and try to ram the terminal. If they were to hit one of those terminals, you're hitting about four million barrels a day of oil exports. That would be a huge blow, the worst thing they could do." Experts agree that even a small attack against Saudi oil infrastructure would immediately spark a rise in oil prices, "but that would be more psychological than rational," Roger Diwan says. Last month, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said his country had made "substantial efforts" to secure the country's oil installations. "It would be difficult, if not impossible, for terrorists to reach them. . . . They are inaccessible to intruders." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 “could take over a tanker, fill it with high explosives and try to ram the terminal. No need for the explosives. A laden supertanker moving at speed has enormous kinetic energy. I did the calculations a while back, but I recall a laden supertanker moving at 20KPH hitting a stationary object is equivalent to a thousand pounds of TNT in a directional shaped charge placed on that object. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-03-20 7:31:28 PM |