Tuesday 29 / October / 2024
Riyadh: Drone attacks caused fires at two major facilities run by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant.
Citing an interior ministry spokesperson, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Saturday the blazes at the facilities in Abqaiq - home to the company's largest oil processing plant - and Khurais were under control.
"At 04.00 am (local time) the industrial security teams of Aramco started dealing with fires at two of its facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais as a result of ... drones," it said.
The ministry did not identify the source of the attack and said investigations were ongoing. It did not specify if there were any casualties or whether operations at the two facilities had been affected.
Saudi Aramco describes its Abqaiq oil processing facility, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) southwest of Dhahran in the kingdom's Eastern Province, as "the largest crude oil stabilisation plant in the world".
The facility processes sour crude oil into sweet crude, then later transports them onto transhipment points on the Gulf and the Red Sea.
Estimates suggest it can process up to seven million barrels of crude oil a day.
